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i 1 


Book_ 

Copyright N°,_ 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 





t 


\ 







OTHER BOOKS BY DR. HOUGH 

THE EYES OF FAITH 

THE MAN OF POWER 

IN THE VALLEY OF DECISION 

THE MEN OF THE GOSPELS 

THE LURE OF BOOKS 

ATHANASIUS: THE HERO 

THE THEOLOGY OF A PREACHER 

THE QUEST FOR WONDER, AND OTHER PHIL¬ 
OSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 

THE LITTLE OLD LADY 
THE CLEAN SWORD 

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROTESTANT 
REFORMATION 

FLYING OVER LONDON 

THE OPINIONS OF JOHN CLEARFIELD 

A LITTLE BOOK OF SERMONS 

THE INEVITABLE BOOK 




TWELVE 

MERRY FISHERMEN 


By 

LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 

f\ 


X 



THE ABINGDON PRESS 

CINCINNATI 


NEW YORK 












■£>V4oia 
, Mi 


Copyright, 1923, by 
LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 



Printed in the United States of America 


AUG II 1923 

A 

©C1A752444 


IN MEMORY OF MY FRIEND 


DR. HUGH JOHNSTON 

THE PASTOR OF GREAT CHURCHES IN CAN¬ 
ADA AND THE UNITED STATES; FOR OVER 
HALF A CENTURY A POWERFUL AND GRA¬ 
CIOUS MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL; A MAN 
WHO WON LOVE AND ADMIRATION IN EVERY 
CITY WHERE HE EXERCISED HIS MANIFOLD 


MINISTRY 


k 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Just at the Beginning. 9 

I. Coordinating the World. 11 

II. A Man Among His Books. 18 

III. The Man and the Machine. ... 25 

IV. Preaching and Paganism. 32 

V. The Jew and Civilization. 40 

VI. The Furtive People. 47 

VII. Commerce and Character. 56 

VIII. The Creative Past . 63 

IX. The Color Scheme of the 

World. 70 

X. General William Booth. 78 

XI. “Saint William and the Dragon” 87 

XII. The Scholar and the Prophet .. 95 

XIII. The Faith Once Delivered and 

Often Interpreted .103 

XIV. Philosophy, Exposition and So¬ 

cial Passion.112 

XV. Personality and Philosophic 

Thought.120 


























JUST AT THE BEGINNING 

It has been the happy fortune of the author 
of these tales of a ministerial club to belong 
to a good many such organizations. The 
Alpha Kappa Club, of Brooklyn; The Jolly 
Friars, of short life but of bright memory; the 
Monday Club, of New York; the Eclectic 
Club, of Baltimore, perhaps the oldest minis¬ 
terial club in America; the Interchurch and 
the Monday Clubs, of the same city; the more 
formal Society of Biblical Research, of Chi¬ 
cago; and the delightful Wranglers Club, of 
Detroit, have given him many opportunities 
to observe this aspect of ministerial life. In 
none of the chapters of this book is there any 
attempt to describe a particular club or to 
portray a particular person. But doubtless all 
of these clubs have had a share in creating the 
atmosphere of the circle called the Twelve 
Merry Fishermen . 

L. H. H. 


9 










I. COORDINATING THE WORLD 

The Twelve Merry Fishermen were a group 
of ministers. And this was the name they 
gave to a ministerial club which they were 
willing to admit was unique among such 
organizations. It represented pretty much 
every conceivable point of view, and the men 
were united by fundamental earnestness and 
desire to have a share in the making of a 
better world rather than by a common bond 
of opinion. They respected each other in spite 
of their differences and the tenacity with which 
some of them adhered to particular views and 
the vigor with which they expressed them. 
They met on one Monday of every month “to 
enjoy an intellectual shower bath,” as Bowen 
Tillman, busy minister of a downtown church, 
expressed it. They all lived in or near one of 
America’s largest cities, and from the head 
of a great institutional church ministering to 
every aspect of the need of the metropolis to 
the theological professor from a nearby divinity 
school and the pastor of a flourishing rural 

community, they were men alive to the finger- 

11 


12 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


tips. We will not introduce them in any 
formal way. We will just secrete the reader 
in a dim corner of the private dining room 
where they met and let him watch and look 
and listen and judge for himself. 

It was the first meeting after the Presidential 
election. And there was a touch of somewhat 
grim irony about the fact that at this par¬ 
ticular meeting Monroe Burton, who had a 
taste for international affairs, and an abiding 
idealism which glowed all the brighter in days 
of contemporary disillusionment and cynicism, 
had read a paper on the subject “The Present 
Status of the League of Nations.” It had 
been a particularly well-wrought-out piece of 
work, going rapidly over the history of vari¬ 
ous attempts to organize the life of the world, 
paying its disrespects to the Holy Alliance 
which followed the Napoleonic wars, and then 
deftly pointing out the steps by which the 
present organization was created, the world¬ 
wide enthusiasm with which the idea was 
greeted, and the tide of reaction which fol¬ 
lowed the meeting of the Peace Conference. 
The final paragraphs were given to a closely 
reasoned setting forth of the elements in the 
situation which made it impossible that the 


COORDINATING THE WORLD 13 


idea should die, and made inevitable some 
sort of world organization. The last sentence 
was particularly pregnant: “Civilization can¬ 
not survive another World War with all the 
increased potencies of destruction which are 
now within our reach. And it will soon be¬ 
come evident that some sort of world-wide 
organization is the only way to save the intel¬ 
lectual and moral and spiritual gains of the last 
three thousand years.” 

Bowen Tillman, busy with the problems of 
his own church, an efficiency expert who made 
his organization the marvel of all the men 
who witnessed its activities, spoke first. 

“That’s a real paper. But what Burton 
doesn’t see is that the idea is dead. The 
election proves it. We are going to attack 
domestic problems and let other people try 
the Atlas act. We have developed a new 
modesty. We are going to let some of the 
problems of giants wait until the giants come. 
One man tried to be a giant. He only suc¬ 
ceeded in breaking his own health and creating 
a nation-wide hostility. I know a corner of 
this big town which must be made Christian. 
That comes pretty near to being my share 
of the remaking of the world.” 


14 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


Waldo Bryant spoke out very quickly and 
with a note of rather unusual emotion in his 
voice. He knew more history than any other 
man in the club, and he made his pulpit a 
place where you had a sense of meeting the 
ages. 

“There’s just one trouble with what you 
say, Tillman,” he declared. “If the world 
doesn’t get steadied a bit, you will have no 
corner left in which to work. The fire which 
had been put out may not endanger your 
town. But it isn’t really out after all. The 
embers are smoldering all over the world; 
and if it burns up again, you cannot expect 
your corner to escape. For the sake of the 
very thing you do so well you ought to be 
keen about the League to coordinate the life 
of the world.” 

“I have just been reading Dr. Kelman’s 
book on international Christianity,” said Morris 
MacDonald, professor of systematic theology in 
a nearby school of the prophets. “Sir William 
Robertson Nicoll’s review of the book in the 
British Weekly set me going. Then the book 
itself quite captured my attention. Kelman 
makes you feel the truth of what Bryant has 
just said. One bit of a paragraph stays in 


COORDINATING THE WORLD 15 


my mind and sometimes I think of the words 
when I am awake at night: ‘There are those 
who ask, “What is the use of talking of Utopia 
when so many people have only hovels to live 
in?” And the answer is that if this Utopia 
does not come, we shall not even have hovels 
to live in, but only graves f ” 

Hunter Morrison a young radical, one of 
whose friends said laughingly that he preached 
the gospel according to the New Republic, now 
spoke up. 

“It is not a League of Nations which America 
has repudiated,” he said. “It is the particular 
League of Nations which is tied up with the 
treaty of peace. Before we entered the war 
Mr. Wilson once got some progressive legis¬ 
lation, and the price he paid for it was what 
has been called the worst pork-barrel Con¬ 
gress since the Civil War. He always does 
that sort of thing. He seeks something good 
and he pays a price for it which no man has 
a right to pay. The new Administration will 
find that America demands our taking our 
place in an organized life of the world. But 
it will get us free forever from the reactionary 
concessions of the Paris Conference.” 

Tom Tabor had been moving a little rest- 


16 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


lessly in his chair while these words had been 
uttered. Now he took up the gauntlet: 

“You are all forgetting that the League of 
Nations is very much alive and that it is 
functioning effectively. It has already proved 
that it can prevent war, and that it has mighty 
forces behind it. After all, it was only a 
beginning that was represented by the work 
in France. It was just the first step. Ample 
room was made for change and improvement. 
If we had done our duty, the whole world 
would be now organized in such a fashion that 
we could begin to talk with reality of the 
permanence of peace.” 

Henry Alton was regarded as the most ju¬ 
dicial member of the little group. Very often 
the others addressed him as “Judge.” Now 
he spoke, and there was a little hush of expect¬ 
ancy as he began: 

“After all, recriminations are useless, and 
often worse,” he said. “The strategy which 
turns a noble dream into an effective achieve¬ 
ment was denied to the President. The whole 
idea became involved in a mass of confusion 
and prejudice. But go beneath the surface 
and you will find a deep and international 
interest in the coordination of the world. It 


COORDINATING THE WORLD 17 


is the missionary enterprise turned into prac¬ 
tical politics. And such mighty human forces 
have united with this deep Christian motive 
that in some fashion it is destined to prove 
irresistible. As there was the day of the tribal 
loyalty, and as there was the day of the feudal 
loyalty, and as there was the day when the 
nation represented the supreme synthesis, so 
the day of an effective organization of the 
world within which national life can nobly 
flourish lies ahead of us. The steps may be 
slow, but the achievement is sure.” 

So the discussion ended for that day. “But 
why,” maybe you ask, “did this club of fishers 
of men call themselves Merry Fishermen?” 
Perhaps that will become evident when you 
know them better. 


II. A MAN AMONG HIS BOOKS 

Waldo Bryant was the man of letters of 
the club. Most of them were bookmen in the 
fine sense of James Russell Lowell’s use of the 
word. But Bryant lived and moved and had 
his being in the world of books. He frankly con¬ 
fessed that there were times when books were 
more real to him than people. He was a min¬ 
ister of a church intensely proud of his noble 
use of the good old English speech and the 
phrases lighted with genuine distinction which 
were sure to appear in any one of his sermons, 
a church with a definite sense of responsibility 
for the intellectual life of its immediate com¬ 
munity. Hunter Morrison called it the Church 
of Sweetness and Light, and rather scornfully 
suggested that it was completely ignoring the 
pressing problems of social reconstruction. He 
and Bryant were great friends and when he 
spoke in this vein Waldo would throw his 
arm over Morrison’s shoulder and remark: 
“Never mind, Hunter. When you get your 
reconstructed society ready for action it will 

be a thin sort of a world unless you have some 

18 


A MAN AMONG HIS BOOKS 


19 


disciples of Matthew Arnold about to keep 
the love of disciplined beauty alive.” 

On this particular day Bryant was to read 
a paper on the theme, “A Man’s Life With 
Books.” The twelve men were all present, 
and they sat back in their chairs with undis¬ 
guised interest as he began. “Waldo has a 
voice which convinces you before you get his 
ideas,” Morris MacDonald declared. And as 
his lithe, athletic phrases fell from his lips you 
did feel that the singularly supple voice in 
which they were expressed added to their 
charm and their power. “In the books of 
the world dead men win a perpetual resur¬ 
rection,” he began. And from the first arrest¬ 
ing sentence every phrase was shining with 
his own love of books and his own long and 
intimate companionship with great minds. The 
echoing music of many a master was felt in 
his own sentences, and withal they rang with 
a fresh and telling quality which was his own. 

On the one hand he pictured the life of the 
man who had never been welcomed to the 
feast of the ages spread so bountifully in the 
literature of the world. On the other hand 
he called forth the men ripe and rich and full 
of mind and nobly disciplined in taste to whom 


20 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


the great voices of all the long-drawn years are 
familiar. 

There was many a facile bit of characteriza¬ 
tion, as when he described Carlyle as an apoth¬ 
ecary who sold moral bitters to the nineteenth 
century. There were bits of fine and tri¬ 
umphant faith, as when he described Browning 
as a man who knew so much about human 
nature that he could not be a pessimist. There 
were bits of irony with their own cut as when he 
spoke of Amy Lowell as a New England woman 
who had kept the Puritan rude honesty and 
had cast aside the Puritan moral passion, the 
mistress of brittle phrases with never a glow 
of moral or spiritual light. There were bits 
of easy humor, as in the paragraph dealing with 
Vachel Lindsay as the man who introduced 
rag-time on Parnassus. 

Through it all there was that sense that 
words are deeds, that feeling for the living 
character of writing which made all his rela¬ 
tion to books so vivid and compelling. You 
watched the moral fights of a man as he went 
on with his life as a reader. You followed 
the victories and defeats which his character 
suffered at the hands of books. And you saw 
him at last the monarch of a vast domain 


A MAN AMONG HIS BOOKS 


21 


where multitudes of noble books were his 
eager slaves. The last paragraph describing 
the voices which speak in a library had a 
chaste and almost ethereal beauty. The men 
sat quite still under the spell which the reader 
had cast upon them when his voice died away 
into silence. 

Bowen Tillman recovered first. “Oh, to 

have time for it!” he ejaculated. 

“ ‘Time? what’s time? Give now to dogs 
and apes. Man has forever,’ ” quoted Hunter 
Morrison. 

“Not at my church,” flashed back Tillman. 

Henry Alton looked over at the busy down¬ 
town minister. “I’m not sure but a shower bath 
of reading will leave a man ready to do some 
other things in half the time,” he observed. 

“The way to do a thing quickly is to do 
something else,” said Benny Malone, whose 
mischief was always ready to break out and 
whose bump of reverence was not strikingly 
developed; at least if that bump is supposed 
to relate itself to dignified human beings. 

“There’s more in what you say than you 
think,” began Morris MacDonald. “Out of 
the mouths of babes and sucklings ...” inter¬ 
rupted Malone. 


22 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


But MacDonald was not to be halted. “The 
fight for a fresh mind is quite as fundamental 
as the fight for an industrious mind,” he de¬ 
clared. “And reading, if it is wisely chosen, 
leaves a man ready to think his way through 
no end of problems with a speed he could not 
have acquired in any other way. When a 
man tells me that he is too busy to read, I 
reply that he is too busy not to read.” 

Fletcher Hilton, who exercised an evan¬ 
gelistic ministry which was the wonder of all 
who knew him, now looked up. “I’m always 
ready to read a book which will bring me 
closer to a man,” he said. “I am always 
ready to throw down a book which will get 
between me and people.” 

“No book would get between you and the 
man who liked that book,” said the irre¬ 
pressible Malone. “So you have a fairly wide 
field.” 

“There is something more I want to say,” 
continued Hilton. “I am afraid of a certain 
citizenship in the world of books which will 
make me less at home with the everyday 
people among whom I must live. If a man 
gets to live on epigrams so that he pan only 
enjoy the society of people who are all the 


A MAN AMONG HIS BOOKS 


23 


while saying clever things, his circle of human 
friends will get rather small.” 

“There’s one for you, Bryant,” said Morrison 
with an amused touch of friendly malice. 

“I won’t have it,” replied Bryant. “You 
can’t possibly be a less effective servant of 
men in the long run because you love the 
things they ought to love rather than the 
things which they love at the moment.” 

Monroe Burton had been silent thus far. 
Now he entered the lists. 

“I’m not afraid of books pushing me away 
from people,” he said. “As a matter of fact, 
people can meet by means of books who would 
find it hard to understand each other in more 
personal contact. You get the essence of a 
man in a book and not the individual and 
temperamental eccentricity.” 

“And precisely what you need is to see the 
essence in its human wrappings and not out¬ 
side of them,” declared Fletcher Hilton. 

Coulton Moore, the Bohemian of the group, 
who with all his busy activities as a minister 
found time for an amazing number of uncon¬ 
ventional human contacts, who knew “dips” 
and “yeggs” and all sorts of furtive folks, 
woke up to the idea just at this minute. 


24 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


“Books are either on the way to people or 
on the way from people. If they are on the 
way to people, it’s a fine morning and a good 
day lies ahead on the open road. If they are 
on the way from people, the sky is getting 
gray and the day is sure to be cheerless at 
last. If your man of books is not a man of 
men as well, he will get to have sawdust where 
he thought he had brains.” 

“From which fate you are forever safe,” 
laughed Bryant. And that ended the dis¬ 
cussion for the day. 


III. THE MAN AND THE MACHINE 

Bowen Tillman had just finished reading 
his paper. The theme of the paper was “The 
Age of Machinery.” Tillman began with the 
inventions of the last quarter of the eighteenth 
century and moved through the whole romantic 
tale of the methods and devices and machines 
which have changed the face of the world and 
the character of civilization. His paper had 
bristled with dates. But at the command of 
his quick and vivid imagination the dates 
lived and glowed with color. His picture of 
the new world the machine has made was as 
scientific as a careful statement of facts could 
make it, and was bright with the play of light 
from a mind which turned hard facts into 
golden poetry. The paper concluded with 
some thoughtful words about the type of 
mind needed to carry the world through all 
the adjustments which the new application of 
power had made necessary. “The future be¬ 
longs to the great organizing engineer,” Tillman 
had declared, and then he had portrayed the 

services of this master of men and things, of 

25 


26 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


manufacturing and transportation and of the 
problems of salesmanship. 

There was silence for a moment when the 
reading of the paper had concluded. It was 
evident that every one of the twelve merry 
fishermen was deeply impressed. Then Benny 
Malone broke out! 

“Give me a job as your private secretary, 
Mr. Super-engineer. I’d like to hitch my 
wagon to your sort of star.” 

Waldo Bryant spoke up moodily: 

“That’s just the temper of the age,” he said. 
“We never stop to think of all the havoc 
wrought by this iconoclastic age of ugly ma¬ 
chines. We never think of all the beauty 
which has been destroyed. We never think of 
all the mental life which has been impover¬ 
ished. We never—” 

“0, come now,” called Coulton Moore, “you 
are singing a dirge too soon. Of course some 
of the old romance is gone, and it is gone 
forever. But think of the new romance. 
Think of all the poems hidden in the whirring 
wheels and moving belts of great machines. 
There is to be a new humanism based upon 
modern inventions. It will produce a new sort 
of man of letters. Sometimes Kipling gives you 


THE MAN AND THE MACHINE 27 


a hint of what it will be like. You can’t turn 
back the clock, Bryant. You’d better turn for¬ 
ward your mind instead. Here’s a train leav¬ 
ing Fifth-Century Athens for Twentieth-Cen¬ 
tury America. Better come and get on board.” 

Monroe Burton scarcely waited for Moore 
to complete his last sentence, “You capitulate 
too soon,” he said. “Let’s take time to exam¬ 
ine the situation. It isn’t the loss of poetry 
I am thinking so much about. It’s the loss of 
life. I don’t object to men using machines. 
I do object to having a man become a machine. 
It’s all right to use a typewriter. The trouble 
is that so many people have become human 
typewriters. We are living in an age of de¬ 
pleted personality. And machines have done 
it. Our taste as well as our productive power 
is lowered until we actually suppose that Amy 
Lowell can write poetry. We are stamping 
real initiative and creative energy out of 
modern life. We are becoming the victims of 
our inventions. We have constructed a 
Frankenstein which seems in fair way to 
destroy our civilization.” 

“Jeremiah, I hail thee,” put in Benny 
Malone. “Just what chapter of the Lamenta¬ 
tions is this?” 


28 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


Henry Alton was smiling a little. Now he 
spoke: 

“It isn’t really as bad as that. Burton,” 
he said. “Every invention is the expression 
of an amazing amount of really creative mental 
power. And the extra hours for the workers 
which these inventions have already made 
possible give an opportunity for an ampler 
mental life and a variety of human experience 
which were one day impossible. The problem 
of the age of machinery is the new leisure 
which has come to the groups we used to de¬ 
scribe as the working classes. If this new 
leisure is used wisely, we can produce a genera¬ 
tion of superbly gifted and superbly trained 
men and women to carry on the big adventure 
of life.” 

Hunter Morrison spoke up wrathfully: 

“You ought to know better, Henry Alton,” 
he said. “You do know as well as I that we 
are living upon a crater of industrial unrest. 
The age of machinery has produced a race of 
slaves. And little enough real difference has 
been made by the slight concessions in hours 
and wages. The only hope is in a real and 
definite reconstruction of the system under 
which we live. A system conceived and born 


THE MAN AND THE MACHINE 29 


in agricultural life cannot live and flourish in 
an industrial age which receives the very form 
of its activity from mechanical inventions.” 

Tom Tabor was on his feet at that. 

“All this talk of reconstruction makes me 
unutterably weary,” he said. “As if we had 
not been doing just that for half a century 
and more. We have worn some of our watch¬ 
words threadbare. Now we need to get down 
to realities. The progress of the nineteenth 
century in social and industrial legislation has 
been an amazing thing. We do not need a 
new system. We do need more poise. Every 
year a fuller life comes within the reach of all 
men of all classes. Tillman is right. We need 
bigger engineers. But it is for the purpose of 
completing a job partly finished, and not for 
the purpose of beginning all over again.” 

‘‘The butterfly above the road 
Preaches contentment to the toad,” 

quoted Hunter Morrison, a little maliciously. 

Just here Fletcher Hilton began to speak: 

“Curiously enough, none of you have said 
anything about the effect of all this on reli¬ 
gion,” he declared. “To me as a preacher it 
seems that the outstanding effect of the age 


30 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


of machinery has been to make the work of 
evangelism more difficult. Life seems to be 
caught up in mysterious and mechanical rela¬ 
tionships. It is harder in all these complex 
organizations to arouse a deep and powerful 
sense of personal responsibility. Men are will¬ 
ing to repent of the sins of the machine. They 
are not willing to admit that they are per¬ 
sonally responsible for the wrong things done 
by the wheels and belts.” 

Morris MacDonald had turned about as 
Hilton began speaking. Now he entered the 
discussion with a little note of eagerness in 
his voice: “What an indictment and what 
a tribute!” he began. “There is the attack 
of humanism. There is the attack of social 
passion. There is the attack of ethics. There 
is the attack of religion. The age of machin¬ 
ery is really having a hard time. But really 
it is not the fault of the machines. They are 
only inanimate slaves. And life could be richer 
for all of us because of their activities. The 
age of machinery is actually an age of instru¬ 
ments we have not yet mastered. It is an age 
of servants we have not yet completely disci¬ 
plined. The supreme challenge which has 
come to humanity up to this day is just the 


THE MAN AND THE MACHINE 31 


opportunity to bend machinery to the higher 
purposes of life.” 

Morris MacDonald paused a moment and a 
twinkle came into his eye. “There is a pas¬ 
sage in the book of Ezekiel which I commend 
to your serious attention,” he said. “It is 
this: ‘The spirit of the living creature was in 
the wheels.’ When machinery is dominated by 
personality the world is safe.” 

“But—” said Hunter Morrison. 

“However—” exclaimed Bowen Tillman. 

“And yet—” cried Waldo Bryant. 

And just at that moment luncheon was 
announced. 


IV. PREACHING AND PAGANISM 


James Clayton was the rural member of 
the club. He was immensely proud that he 
could call himself a country minister. He was 
heartily a part of the life about him. You 
could find volumes of discussion of scientific 
agriculture on his shelves. He was a part of 
the larger life of the world. You could often 
find him poring over some book which set 
about the unraveling of a knotting international 
problem. He was a part of the vast unfolding 
life of the church. No volumes in his well- 
packed cases showed more evidence of fre¬ 
quent perusal than those which told the story 
of the thought of the church, the long tale 
of its intellectual struggles. Somehow he 
brought things together in his own life and in 
his ministry which men often think about in 
the terms of a subtle antagonism. Busy as he 
was about his wide-lying parish, he had a keen 
scent for the significant new book. You were 
rather likely to find that book upon his study 
table. 

The Twelve Merry Fishermen knew the ways 

32 


PREACHING AND PAGANISM 33 


and the abilities of Clayton very well, and it 
was with a little touch of hearty expectancy 
that they gathered in the hotel on the day 
when he was to read the paper. He took his 
manuscript from his pocket, and laid beside 
it a small but closely printed volume. “I am 
going to discuss Professor Albert Parker Fitch’s 
Yale Lectures, ‘Preaching and Paganism, ” he 
began. The men leaned back in their chairs 
to listen. 

Clayton was not a particularly attractive 
reader. He had his own personal tricks of 
emphasis. And he had an entirely individual 
set of modulations of tone. But withal he 
held your attention, and usually you forgot the 
reader in listening to his thoughts before he 
had been reading very long. On this particular 
day he gave a few graphic touches to placing 
the mental character of Professor Fitch before 
the members of the club. You knew that the 
man he was discussing was a cosmopolitan 
man of letters with a gift for phrases which 
cut their way to the heart of a subject like a 
sharp knife. You felt the resilience of the mind 
beginning the Yale lectures with the observa¬ 
tion that it was necessary in that course not 
merely to hitch one’s wagon to a star but to 


34 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


a whole constellation. You sensed the quality 
of close and adequate technical scholarship 
which gave precision as well as depth to Pro¬ 
fessor Fitch’s work. Then Clayton gave him¬ 
self to an interpretation of the lectures them¬ 
selves. You found that you were in the pres¬ 
ence of a busy modern mind acquainted with 
all the contemporary watchwords, alive with 
social passion, warmly sympathetic with every 
real thing in contemporary life, and at heart 
desperately lonely for one thing, terribly hungry 
for authentic contact with the living God. 
This loneliness you felt had not been in vain. 
This hunger had not left the spirit of the man 
empty. In deep and searching analysis of his 
own soul and of the period in which he lived, 
he had discovered the inadequacy of human¬ 
ism, and the hot power of that invading pagan¬ 
ism which, wearing many a garment, peers 
in upon us at every turn of the road. He had 
dared to be honest with the moral problems. 
He had scorned evasion and subterfuge. And 
a new sense of God, a new apprehension of 
religion, a new and startlingly vital under¬ 
standing of redemption had come to him out 
of all this. The passion and the enthusiasm of 
it all was poured forth in the Yale lectures on 


PREACHING AND PAGANISM 35 


preaching. Some of the sentences which Clay¬ 
ton quoted were conclusive enough of the sharp 
definiteness of the analysis of Professor Fitch, 
and of the ethical energy of his message. 

“Humanism makes an inhuman demand upon 
the will.” “The primitive in man is a beast 
whom it is hard to chain, nor does humanism, 
with its semiscientific, semisentimental lauda¬ 
tion of all natural values, produce that exact¬ 
ing mood of inward scrutiny in which self- 
control has most chance of succeeding.” “It 
would appear to be generally true that society 
at this moment is not chiefly concerned with 
either love or justice, renunciation or discipline, 
nor with the supplanting of the old order, but 
with perpetuating the naturalistic principle by 
means of a partial redivision of the spoils, a 
series of compromises, designed to make it 
more tolerable for one class of its former vic¬ 
tims.” “The deepest cause of human misery is 
not inheritance, is not environment, is not 
ignorance, is not incompleteness: it is the in¬ 
formed but perverse human will.” “You are 
something more than physical hunger and 
reproductive instinct.” “You do not make a 
man moral by enlightening him.” “No man 
was ever yet able to preach the living God 


36 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


until he understood that the central need in 
human life is to reconcile the individual con¬ 
science to itself, compose the anarchy of the 
spiritual life. Men want to be happy and be 
fed; but men must have inward peace.” The 
paper concluded with a glowing account of 
the vital and freshly phrased expression of the 
eternal meaning of the moral and spiritual 
battle and the Christian peace as these are 
set forth by Professor Fitch. 

Clayton had hardly finished when Hunter 
Morrison spoke: 

“The words are the words of modernity, but 
the spirit comes out of the Middle Ages. It’s 
just another attempt to lead us to surrender 
the gains of the world which has lived since 
the days of Petrarch.” 

Baldwin Paxton followed in his slow and 
careful way. 

“It seems to me that Professor Fitch under¬ 
estimates the contribution of modern science 
to the solution of the moral and the religious 
problem. And with all his scholarship there is 
a subtle appeal to the emotions which has its 
own elements of grave danger.” 

Monroe Burton had a twinkle in his eye: 

“Professor Fitch is really a belated Wesley 


PREACHING AND PAGANISM 37 


trying to preach a sermon with the vocabulary 
of a New-England intellectual,” he said. 

This was too much for Fletcher Hilton: 

“Just go a little farther, Burton,” he said. 
“You might add that he is an Augustine and a 
Luther and a Paul. In other words, you might 
say that being a professor of the history of 
religion has given him a sense of historic con¬ 
tinuity. He is trying to let the Christian ages 
speak in the voice of the age.” 

Coulton Moore now spoke up: 

“I’m a bit puzzled by the contrast between 
Professor Fitch’s little brochure. Can the Church 
Survive in the Changing Order? and his Yale 
lectures. One seemed the very voice of every¬ 
thing real and restless in the life of to-day. 
The other seems the utterance of a modern 
man who has just gone with Moses to the 
Mount of the Law and has been swiftly carried 
to the Mount of Transfiguration and then has 
come down to bend the contemporary vernacu¬ 
lar to the meaning of what he has seen and felt.” 

Waldo Bryant turned on Moore with this 
sentence: 

“One volume is diagnosis. The other is 
prescription. And the prescription had not 
been discovered when the diagnosis was made.” 


38 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


Bowen Tillman moved a little eagerly: 

“The thing which gripped me about ‘Preach¬ 
ing and Paganism’ was this,” he said. “I have 
been feeling for a hundred days that my preach¬ 
ing was getting thin. Professor Fitch put his 
hand on the cause. He did better. He showed 
me the way out of my trouble. I have not 
been calling to the deeps in human life. He 
made me resolve to besiege the farthest citadel 
in a man’s soul. I feel as if he had put iron 
into my blood.” 

Tom Tabor was sitting beside Tillman. Now 
he spoke: 

“Clayton said nothing about Professor 
Fitch’s uplifting worship as over against preach¬ 
ing. I like to think of a new appreciation of 
worship. But I am clear that Professor Fitch 
does not think highly enough of preaching.” 

“These things ought ye to have done and 
not to have left the others undone,” inter¬ 
rupted Benny Malone. 

Morris MacDonald was seated at the end of 
the table. He moved a little. Everyone felt 
that his word would close the discussion of 
the day. 

“There are things in this book I do not 
believe,” he said. “There are trails of thought 


PREACHING AND PAGANISM 


39 


I cannot follow. I wish that Professor Fitch 
were a little less cavalier at times with things 
which still glow with wonder and with power 
to multitudes of Christians. But for all that, 
I want to say that no book about religion has 
so stirred me for a dozen years. This little 
volume rises right above the other things 
which are being written in America. Once 
again we have a book which sounds the au¬ 
thentic note of religion as a morally trans¬ 
forming contact with the life of the eternal. I 
would put it on the study of every preacher 
in the United States.” He paused a moment. 
Then he added, “In this book at last Greece 
pays tribute to Jerusalem.” 


V. THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION 


Hunter Morrison could always be trusted 
to choose a theme which was alive in the con¬ 
temporary mind. 

“I know his subject. It is ‘The Age of Steel 
and the Age of Men,’ ” declared Benny Malone, 
as the twelve took their places around the 
table. 

Morrison looked up with some amusement in 
his eyes. 

“Guess again, Benny,” he said. 

“Then it’s ‘The Closed Mind and the Open 
Shop/ ” ventured Malone. 

“Wrong once more,” said Morrison. 

By this time all the members were settled 
comfortably in their chairs. Hunter Morrison 
took his paper from his pocket. 

“My subject,” he announced, “is ‘The Jew 
and the Safety of the World.’ ” 

More than one member of the club made a 
little gesture of quickened interest. Morrison 
had an unusual knowledge of significant radi¬ 
cal literature. He maintained a mental life of 
really cosmopolitan interest. And he could be 

40 


THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION 41 


trusted to deal with this problem in a large 
and critical and fearless way. He began with 
a discussion of the articles published in the 
London Morning Post under the title, “The 
Cause of the World Unrest.” He referred to 
such expressions of opinion as you find in one 
cutting chapter of Gilbert Chesterton’s book, 
The New Jerusalem. He noted some of the 
vigorous American expressions of Anti-Semitic 
feeling. He called attention to the little book 
of Lucien Wolf, The Myth of the Jewish Menace 
in World Affairs, and to John Spargo’s effective 
discussion, The Jew and American Ideals. 
Then he turned to a quick survey of the long 
story of the Jew. The men about the table 
felt once more the power of that high, pure 
faith which rose in the midst of the unabashed 
animalism of Semitic religion. They sensed the 
life which lay back of the noblest distinctions 
of Hebrew law and the loftiest moral and 
spiritual heights of Hebrew prophecy. They 
stopped to remember that when Jesus spoke 
his words of matchless insight and power he 
utilized a mind trained in Jewish traditions and 
rich with Jewish ethical and spiritual idealism. 
“Only Israel furnished a possible background 
for the teachings of Jesus,” declared Morrison. 


42 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


Then the long story of Jewish life in many 
ages and in many lands was touched upon. 
You saw the Jew become a cosmopolitan who 
appropriated the Greek culture in Alexandria. 
You watched the flowering of the Jewish mind 
in the golden age in Spain. And you looked 
upon terrible deeds of persecution in many a 
country. You watched the kings of the Middle 
Ages very ready to repent of their tolerance 
when they owed debts to wealthy Jews. You 
watched the bigotry of the world fasten upon 
a tortured race. Coming to Russia, you saw 
men of the old regime alertly watching. When 
the menace of revolution was near, you saw 
once and again the attempt to make people 
forget their desire for revolution in their con¬ 
centration upon hatred of the Jew. And when, 
after massacre and ruthless destruction, this 
sort of attempt failed, you saw skillful and 
remorseless men turning the hatred of the 
Jew into a world-wide propaganda to further 
purposes of their own. There was an ample 
discussion of the Protocols of the Wise Men of 
Zion. The contradictory accounts published 
with varied editions were carefully analyzed. 
The absolute absence of anything like real 
proof of their allegations was made plain. 


THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION 43 


“No jury would convict upon such evidence, 5 ’ 
declared Morrison. The assertion that “at the 
close of a series of secret meetings of influential 
leaders of the conspiracy, held under Masonic 
auspices, a woman stole from one of the most 
influential and highly initiated leaders of Free¬ 
masonry” the documents revealing the plot 
was quoted, and the fashion in which it was 
contradicted was emphasized. A few telling 
words were given to the relation between Jews 
and Bolshevism. It was pointed out that 
where masses of Jews lived Bolshevism was 
less easily successful in Russia. And the vigor 
of Anti-Bolshevistic leadership on the part of 
the Jews was shown. The sufferings of the Jews 
under the Bolshevist regime were made clear. 
In a clever aside Morrison quoted from Spargo 
the account of the absurd theory that the 
English are a part of the Jewish race and that 
the British government is the principal direct¬ 
ing power of the Jewish conspiracy, and the 
fact that this theory, carefully omitted from 
every English translation, was reproduced in 
the 1905 Russian edition of the work of Nilus, 
to whom we are supposed to owe all our knowl¬ 
edge of the Protocols. The paper then turned 
to a tribute to some of the great Jewish thinkers 


44 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


like Spinoza in the seventeenth century and 
Bergson in our own. It closed with a plea for 
that fair play upon which our very institu¬ 
tions rest. “If a Jew breaks a law, let him be 
punished like any other man,” said Morrison. 
“But do not suspect him because he is a Jew. 
Do not hate him because he is a Jew. And 
do not let loose upon him the bitterness of that 
race hatred which has pursued him with such 
beastly fury almost all over the world.” The 
last word of the paper was a picture of America 
as a land where men of every race and every 
religious belief may confidently expect to find 
justice and, even more, an outreach of that 
understanding sympathy which is brother¬ 
hood and makes for peace. 

Bowen Tillman began the discussion. “Good 
work, my friend,” he said. “Just the same, I 
wish rich Jews had had a little less to do with 
the corrupting aspects of the moving-picture 
business.” 

“I’m not defending all Jews,” Morrison 
flashed back. “I am just contending that 
there is no Jewish conspiracy and that the 
race is still the source of rich and noble ideal¬ 
ism.” 

Waldo Bryant spoke next. 


THE JEW AND CIVILIZATION 45 


“You commend the race to my judgment. 
But you will never commend some members 
of the race to my taste,” he said. 

“All of which might be said of any race,” 
said Tom Tabor. “And add to that the ages 
of persecution. You must grow a race in a 
garden of flowers if delicacy is the thing you 
want most. If a race survives what would 
annihilate most races, you must expect it to 
have strength rather than grace. For all that, 
you can find the delicacy and the grace too 
in many a noble member of this racial group.” 

Baldwin Paxton was waiting to get in a word. 

“We must never forget,” he said, “that we 
ought to be more careful to be just if there 
are racial barriers. And we should be doubly 
sure of our evidence if we even suspect that 
we feel a touch of personal prejudice.” 

Coulton Moore said the last word of the day. 
“I’ve watched a good deal of practical social 
ministry in my time,” he said. “The Jewish 
welfare work is a credit to our cities, and the 
Jews know how to sympathize and how to 
give. They knew how to die too, in the name 
of liberty of the world. And as Disraeli gave 
England brilliant service and helped it to see 
its own great destiny, so Jews have been ready 


46 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


to love the land they made their own. They 
have their place in America. And we are only 
true to ourselves when we think of them as 
fellow Americans and not as members of a 
particular race.” 


VI. THE FURTIVE PEOPLE 


The Club was having its last meeting be¬ 
fore the summer vacation period. It was a 
very old-fashioned outdoor meeting. Leaving 
automobiles in the various garages at home 
the men had taken a trolley car, riding about 
twelve miles out from the city. Then they 
took a road which wound among the hills and 
finally pulled up at a rendezvous on the edge 
of a high bit of forest country. There was a 
wonderful view of hill and valley and river 
and the men flung themselves on the grass 
to drink it all in. Each member of the club 
had carried his own neatly packed box of 
provisions for the evening meal which would 
come a little later. For a time they were 
content to look upon the hills and the trees 
and all the fresh beauty of early summer and 
to let their eyes wander to the city which lay 
in the valley, seeming this bright and clear 
afternoon very distant and very still. 

Coulton Moore was to read the paper of 
the day. He looked a bit more the Bohemian 

than usual with his dark, eager face, his deep, 

47 


48 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


flashing eyes and his slouch hat which he wore 
with a certain careless grace. The men had 
all found comfortable positions, and it was a 
good and hearty group upon which Coulton 
Moore looked as he removed his hat, took 
his paper from his inside coat pocket and pre¬ 
pared to read. 

“My subject,” he began in a curious half 
formal way he had which was in sharp con¬ 
trast with his temperament as his friends 
came to know it. “My subject is 'The Chil¬ 
dren of Ishmael in America.’ ” 

Waldo Bryant gave a little gesture of satis¬ 
faction followed by a half-audible ejaculation. 
The theme suited the place and the time and 
he settled back to listen to a man with a touch 
of wildness in his own blood as he described 
the life and habits of the underworld. Bryant 
declared sometimes that Moore was like Victor 
Hugo’s character Javert, who had to be either 
a criminal or a detective, only in Moore’s case 
the alternatives were an outlaw against so¬ 
ciety or a preacher who spent much of his 
time trying to save outlaws to civilization and 
to Christianity. But by this time Moore was 
reading. 

He began by telling how years before he 


THE FURTIVE PEOPLE 


49 


had read Donald Lowrie’s My Life in Prison , 
and of how it had roused his mind to the 
experience of those who spent years in the 
great American prisons. He told of his read¬ 
ing of the writings of Thomas Mott Osborne 
and of the intimate way in which he had fol¬ 
lowed the work of that Knight Errant for the 
Outcasts as it was carried on at Sing Sing. 
He spoke of Wellington Scott’s Seventeen Years 
in the Underworld with its illuminating account 
of the processes by which an American boy 
can become a criminal and its convincing 
narrative regarding prison conditions as the 
author found them. Then he plunged into 
his own experiences with the furtive people. 
From this moment his hearers listened with 
rapt and eager interest. Moore had the natural 
gift of a story-teller, and as he moved from 
one big American city to another following the 
trail of his adventurous endeavors to win the 
men of the underworld his auditors felt that 
they were indeed entering a new world. He 
described many a visit to many a prison from 
Sing Sing on the East to San Quentin on the 
West, and as you followed him in and out of 
these great fortresses there was always the 
human touch, always the revealing insight. 


50 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


With instinctive sympathy he seemed to dis¬ 
cover the point of view of the man who has 
become the foe of organized society. You 
felt as if you were looking at the criminal 
from within and not from without. Or, as 
Benny Malone put it afterward, you felt as 
if you had become the criminal. There was 
an honest consideration of the bitter crimes 
and the loathsome vices which infest the under¬ 
world. But there was also the clearest sort 
of insistence that many a criminal fights a 
great moral fight to keep free from the darker 
things and there was an account of the code 
of morals of the crook which had a whim¬ 
sical understanding of the type the reader was 
describing. The hours of torturing conscious¬ 
ness of what the criminal life means and the 
wistful loneliness hidden in the heart of many 
a crook were set forth with an insight which 
carried conviction. And the capacity for good 
hidden away in the cast-off lives of the children 
of Ishmael was described with a noble and 
passionate energy. Last of all, there were 
just a few stories of men outside the pale whom 
Moore had seen fight the good fight and win 
at last, leaving the furtive ways of the furtive 
people for the ways of integrity and good will. 


THE FURTIVE PEOPLE 


51 


The men sat quiet a little while in the late 
afternoon. James Clayton was gathering sticks 
and bits of wood together. Soon he had 
lighted a fire and in a few moments there was 
the aroma of coffee and other indications that 
an outdoor supper was being prepared. 

Baldwin Paxton was the first to speak: 

“I confess that I am afraid of that sort of 
thing,” he said. “It’s a bit too much like 
taking down the walls. It has taken centuries 
to achieve an orderly world and I can’t see 
but the man who refuses to be a part of it 
must pay the penalty. Thomas Mott Osborne 
won the friendship of criminals. I am not so 
sure that he won them to a permanent refor¬ 
mation.” 

“Would you say the same thing of Maude 
Ballington Booth?” inquired Morris Mac¬ 
Donald. 

“Of course there’s a big difference,” ad¬ 
mitted Paxton. “And I’ve no doubt she has 
done much good. But when I hear her speak 
I feel once and again as if her heart is nearer 
to the prisoner than to society.” 

“Thank God,” said Hunter Morrison, fer¬ 
vently. 

Bowen Tillman was holding a tiny bit of 


52 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


bacon near a bright bit of blaze. He turned 
to enter the conversation with results not at 
all conducive to the attractiveness of the 
bacon for the palate. But he went on undis¬ 
turbed. 

“I really do believe we have been thinking 
with too much sentimentality of the criminal 
class.” He smiled a little ruefully. “I thought 
I was a fairly good judge of human nature. 
But only last month I lost twenty-five dollars 
because I believed the story of a plausible 
confidence man. I am beginning to think 
that a little sternness is the best kindness.” 

Monroe Burton blazed into the discussion 
just at this moment with a good deal of in¬ 
tensity. 

“I wonder if some of you men have ever 
been on a commission which investigated con¬ 
ditions in one of the old type of prisons. I 
had that experience and I haven’t talked about 
sentimental treatment of criminals since. If I 
had to go through what some of these poor 
chaps endured, I would be very much afraid 
of the consequences. Many a prison has taken 
a man who had made a bad mistake and has 
turned him into a brute. And it’s a clear 
waste of the most valuable raw material in 


THE FURTIVE PEOPLE 


53 


the world. Of course a man must keep his 
head. But you needn’t fear that you’ll corrupt 
a criminal if you show him that you have a 
human heart.” James Clayton now found 
time to enter the lists, though it was with a 
very gentle word. 

“There are little homes in the country from 
which many of them come,” he said. “One 
of my boys came back last winter. He was 
all broken and full of despair. Life had been 
too ‘much for him. And he wore his terrible 
memories of prison like a uniform in his haggard 
face.” He waited a moment. Then a rare 
smile kindled all his countenance. “He’s found 
his way now. Every day he walks a little 
more firmly. And we are all standing ready 
to help.” 

Now the supper was served and for a while 
the talk turned to other things. 

Then before the men started home Coulton 
Moore had his final word for the day. It con¬ 
sisted of three pictures. One was a memory of 
Mrs. Booth, mother to so many motherless men, 
pouring out her love of goodness and her 
hatred of evil and her belief in the redemption 
of men in words which glowed with power 
while fifteen hundred men sat spell-bound in 


54 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


a great prison. One was the story of the old 
crook who had forgotten how to weep when, 
one day, he saw Thomas Mott Osborne walk¬ 
ing through the aisle of the prison wearing the 
prison garb and submitting to all the unlovely 
experiences met by the men under sentence. 
The innocent man in stripes broke the hard 
heart of the old criminal whom nothing else 
could reach. The last picture was of a “yegg” 
reclaimed after years and years of crime and 
standing a test which made its appeal to 
every instinct of his old lawless days. As he 
stood victor in that hour you saw a hope for 
him and for all his kind. 

“I know a man may say that it is danger¬ 
ous to generalize from individual cases,” ad¬ 
mitted Moore. “But in these matters you 
can’t leave the concrete man and his victory 
out of account. And one man who succeeds 
is more significant than a dozen who fail.” 

“And what is the secret of success?” inquired 
Henry Alton. 

“Sometimes a man finds a friend,” replied 
Moore with a thrill in his voice. “And some¬ 
times he finds an open door of opportunity. 
And sometimes he learns to pray.” 

By this time the men were ready for the 


THE FURTIVE PEOPLE 


55 


long walk through the light of the late after¬ 
noon. Benny Malone was unusually sober. He 
muttered half to himself as he walked along. 
‘Til have to find a son of Ishmael when I get 
back to town.” 

Coulton Moore overheard him. 

“Go to it, old man,” he said. “When enough 
men do it we’ll decrease the tribe of Ishmael 
in the world.” 


VII. COMMERCE AND CHARACTER 


Tom Tabor was to read the paper of the 
day. 

“It’s all the fault of my boy, Tom the Third.” 
He began. “He has been carrying Webster’s 
General History of Commerce under his arm and 
telling me what a wonderful time the class 
has been having with that book in his school. 
The teacher must be a wizard. He has these 
boys sailing imaginary ships in all the seas 
and delivering cargoes in all the ports. Well, 
I couldn’t let this son of mine get so far ahead 
of me. So I read Webster’s book. Then I 
really got interested. So I bought Professor 
Clive Day’s History of Commerce and read it 
with no end of enjoyment. About that time 
Professor Van Metre published his Economic 
History of the United States. I was all ready 
for it and read every page as if it had been 
an engrossing novel. Then I got hold of one 
or two commercial geographies. I followed 
them with more general discussions, always 
paying particular attention to what was said 

about the commercial life of the various peoples 

56 


COMMERCE AND CHARACTER 57 


in the various stages of their history. And 
out of it all has come this paper. My subject 
is, ‘Commerce and Character.’ ” 

“Prepare for the apotheosis of the status quo” 
muttered Hunter Morrison under his breath 

“The tradesman invades the minister’s sanc¬ 
tum,” threw out Waldo Bryant. 

But Tom Tabor was perfectly undisturbed. 
He waited for complete quiet and then he 
began his paper. 

He struck a high note at the very beginning 
by advancing the claim that trade began when 
men discovered that they could do for each 
other what they could not do for themselves. 
The paper was really a tale of many cities. 
You watched the bustle and hurry on the 
streets of ancient Nineveh. You felt the pulse 
of Athens when it was a mistress of commerce 
as well as a mistress of art. You saw the 
manifold roads leading toward Rome filled 
with merchandise as well as echoing to the 
feet of hard-faced soldiers. You saw the 
growth of the commercial life of the Italian 
cities of the Middle Ages. And even as you 
felt their artistic splendor so you responded to 
the skill of their merchants with their wide 
lying trade. You moved about among the 


58 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 

/ 

cities of the Hanseatic League as it became an 
empire of buying and selling and a political 
power as well. You followed the growth of 
the new commerce after the great age of dis¬ 
covery. You followed in the ways of Portugal 
during its days of powerful commerce. You 
were fairly dazzled by the brilliancy of the 
golden hour in the commercial life of Spain. 
You watched Holland make its buying and 
selling an effective instrument of power. Then 
you surveyed the great struggle between France 
and England. It was a political struggle. It 
was a religious struggle. And in a very real 
way it was also a commercial struggle. And 
both in Asia and in America England was 
triumphant. You watched the emerging of the 
New Republic. You felt the quality of its life 
as a carrying nation during the earlier stages 
of the Napoleonic wars. You followed its 
activities in a later day when its clipper ships 
were the most wonderful carriers in all the 
world. Then you watched the steam power 
of England drive the clipper ship from its 
place of power on the sea. You surveyed the 
building of great sea giants and the spreading 
of a network of rails over all the continents. 
You saw the machine age transform production 


COMMERCE AND CHARACTER 59 


just as the new transportation transformed the 
delivery of manufactured goods. Before the 
World War you saw the railroad mileage of 
the world reach a total of over six hundred thou¬ 
sand miles. You saw the world’s output of coal 
become a billion and a third of tons in 1912. 
You saw the world’s total registered merchant 
tonnage reach nearly forty-seven million tons 
in 1913. In this same year of 1913 you saw 
the world’s trade reach the sum of about 
forty-two billion dollars. 

Turning from this array of facts and figures 
and pictures of trade, Tom Tabor brought 
his paper to a close with a brief but trenchant 
analysis. “A civilization is only safe,” he de¬ 
clared “when its growth in production and 
distribution is paralleled by its growth in in¬ 
tegrity. Character must keep pace with com¬ 
merce. The tragedy of the modern world lies 
just in the fact that the two steeds have not 
gone down the road together. Our prosperity 
has outrun our integrity. Our commerce has 
developed more rapidly than our character.” 
There were clear and vivid illustrations of what 
the author of the paper meant by these general¬ 
izations, and then there was a final word as 
to the significance of the Christian Church as 


60 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


a great producer and distributor of character. 
This was the last sentence: “The church deals 
in the one commodity of which the modern 
world stands in most desperate need.” 

Bowman Tillman opened the discussion: 

“There is a devotee of Babson in my church 
who would like to read that paper,” he de¬ 
clared. “And for my part I am immensely 
grateful to Tabor for putting the church where 
it belongs in the great economic structure.” 

“That's just the question,” broke in Hunter 
Morrison. “Where does the church belong? 
Is it to be the perpetual servant of the present 
order with all its inequalities, or is it to help 
to produce a new order which shall really 
reflect the will of God in the economic life? 
It seems to me that Tabor has taken us right 
up to the edge of the critical matters and then 
has closed his paper. He has not told us 
whether commerce in the present order can be 
made Christian.” 

Fletcher Hilton was ready with a charac¬ 
teristic word: 

“Any system will break down which is not 
based upon individual integrity at last,” he 
said. “And with all its faults our present 
system has unrealized possibilities of good when 


COMMERCE AND CHARACTER 61 


it is administered by men whose personal 
character has developed a sense of social 
responsibility.” 

Morris MacDonald looked on a little whim¬ 
sically at this bit of thrust and counterthrust 
so typical of the two men. Then he took up 
the discussion: 

“As I have been listening to Tabor I have 
been thinking all the while of an invisible com¬ 
merce which he did not mention. I could see 
not only the bales containing all the material 
wares of trade, but the vast treasures of the 
mind which have been carried about on all 
the ships and on all the routes of trade. The 
commerce in ideas has often been far more 
important than the commerce in things.” 

“And I would like to carry that a step 
farther,” said James Clayton. “There is a 
commerce in the things of the conscience and the 
things of the spirit which has changed the face 
of the world. When Paul embarked in a Medi¬ 
terranean grain ship something more important 
was on board than all the food supplies. When 
merchants with packs on their backs told the 
story of the Christian religion to ladies in far 
fortresses while they showed their silks and 
laces, a commerce in ideals of life was being 


62 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


carried on which was to have its own share in 
the making of the modern world. When Pacific 
steamers carry prophets with the flame of the 
Christian passion in their hearts to the wait¬ 
ing East they carry destiny with them.” 

Henry Alton had a quiet light in his eye as 
he listened. Now he spoke that last word of 
the day’s discussion. 

“We need them all,” he said. “The mer¬ 
chants in things and the merchants in ideas 
and the merchants in ideals. We need them 
all together thinking and struggling and work¬ 
ing. We must be clear-eyed and honest and 
steady. We must be as conservative as ancient 
good. We must be as radical as newly dis¬ 
covered truth. We must remember that no 
group has a monopoly in the possession of truth. 
It will require all the experience and all the 
idealism of all the groups to bring in the better 
day. The prophet of scorn is sure to despise 
something which he needs for the completion 
of his own work. Numberless merchants who 
go about with good will as their commodity 
must help us to live together patiently, to under¬ 
stand each other with friendly sympathy. And 
then we can create the structure upon which 
the nobler commerce of the future will rest.” 


VIII. THE CREATIVE PAST 


Benny Malone had been converted to the 
study of history. It began with H. G. Wells. 
He read the Outline of History with feverish 
interest. Then he read Breasted’s Ancient 
Times , and Robinson’s Medieval and Modern 
Times , hurrying through them to use his own 
phrase, “sixty miles an hour.” When Pro¬ 
fessor Van Loon’s Story of Mankind was pub¬ 
lished he threw himself into it as if it had 
been a thrilling tale of adventure—“as it is,” 
he declared. Then he got hold of that ripe 
and thoughtful little book. The Living Past , by 
F. S. Marvin, and perused it with fascinated 
interest. Borrowing from the knowledge of 
more erudite friends, he secured masterly vol¬ 
umes which captured the very meaning of great 
periods like that of fifth-century Athens and 
thirteenth-century Europe and the period of the 
Renaissance and the Protestant Revolt and the 
French Revolution and the new industrial age. 
Then when his mind was full of the move¬ 
ment of it all he wrote a paper for the club. 

The men were in high good humor that day. 

Hunter Morrison began the chaffing as they 

took their places about the table. 

63 



64 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


“I can guess Benny’s secret,” he declared. 
“He’s going to take us into the mind of Max 
Eastman and there discover all the long hidden 
mysteries of the philosophy of humor.” 

“I didn’t know radicals had a sense of hu¬ 
mor,” put in Waldo Bryant. 

“You prefer the glittering mental swordplay 
of magnates who are suffocated by their own 
magnificence,” Morrison flashed back with 
delighted malice. 

“I prefer to hear Malone read a paper on 
‘Salvation by Mirth,’ ” responded Bryant. “He 
knows all sorts of secrets of conquering evils 
by making them ridiculous. If you can get a 
man to laugh at a thing with scornful disdain he 
is free from its power. If you can get a sulk¬ 
ing angry man to laugh, he forgets his wrath.” 

“Who’s going to read this paper?” inter¬ 
rupted Baldwin Paxton. 

By this time the men were all in their places 
and Malone began. 

“My subject is, ‘The Momentum of His¬ 
tory.’ ” 

He gave a tiny preliminary cough. Then he 
embarked on his first paragraph. 

“The past has been buried a good many 
times. But it has never died. You think 


THE CREATIVE PAST 


65 


you are through with it. But you never are. 
As a matter of fact, the past hasn’t happened. 
It has only begun to happen. And the future 
is not yet to come. It is partly over. And the 
present is a mixture of what has been and what 
is yet to be-” 

“Shades of Gilbert Chesterton!” Bowen 
Tillman burst out. 

Malone went on: “The past has gotten up 
steam. It can’t stop. It is in process of run¬ 
ning away with the world. If a man really 
starts something, he’s more alive after he is 
dead than he was when he walked about in 
the flesh. You can manage the living people 
if you just know what to do with the ghosts.” 

By this time the paper itself had gained 
a fair amount of momentum and the members 
of the club leaned forward a little as Benny 
Malone went on with what one of them after¬ 
ward described as a canter through history. 

He began with creatures in the water and 
described the adventure of those who made 
the great experiment of living upon the land. 
He spoke whimsically of the pensive memories 
of those whose fins had turned into arms. He 
painted a graphic picture of the fearful courage 
with which an early man watched a fire kindled 



66 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


by lightning, drew near to it, and with shud¬ 
dering daring fed it and kept it alive in the 
world. He moved with galloping steps through 
the old stone age, the new stone age, and on 
to the period when civilization appears in the 
valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates and 
in the valley of the Nile. He pictured the 
early Phoenicians building their ships, and at 
last with an audacity of heroism staying out 
of sight of land in the dark of the night rowing 
all the while and coming to another shore on 
another day. He put clearly that old struggle 
as the Greeks took the sea power away from 
the Phoenicians. And it was almost as if 
Waldo Bryant had been speaking as he told 
of that great flowering of the human spirit 
whose beauty and fragrance have made the 
fifth century in Athens immortal. He swept 
through the period of the rise of the great 
power north of Greece and eagerly followed 
Alexander the Great in his conquests. He 
paused to watch the growth of Rome and its 
fight to the death with Carthage. He drew a 
far-flung picture of the grandeur of the Empire 
and stood in silent awe in a little town not 
far from the eastern Mediterranean coast to 
listen to the first cry of a child whose voice is 


THE CREATIVE PAST 


67 


to speak a new word of hope for the world. 
Moving back, he traced the coming of the Bar¬ 
barians and then on to the break-up of Rome, 
the rise of feudalism and the imperial dream 
of Charlemagne. He outlined the story of the 
Holy Roman Empire with its struggles be¬ 
tween mighty Popes and mighty emperors. 
The Crusades captured his imagination. The 
new life in Europe was like new life in his own 
soul. The love of beauty in the south and 
the love of goodness in the north spelled out 
the story of the springtime of the world. You 
watched great nations rise and struggle. You 
watched brave sailors discover new continents. 
You surveyed the beginnings of political lib¬ 
erty and the first struggling steps of democ¬ 
racy. You saw the birth of science. You 
listened to the whir of the machines which 
were to make a new world. You watched many 
a movement of the mind and many a struggle 
of the human spirit. And then you found 
yourself in all the bitter convulsions of the 
world war. And out of it all you came trail¬ 
ing clouds of glory and ignominy, with a her¬ 
itage of love and hate, of good and evil, with 
the past blowing by you like a whilrwind to 
make the future which is to be. 


68 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


“Whew!” cried Tom Tabor as the paper 
closed. “Let me get my breath!” 

“Help me to catch hold of something,” said 
Monroe Burton, “so that I can stop.” 

“That may not be scholarship but it is life,” 
declared Morris MacDonald in open admiration. 

Then the men leaned back in their chairs for a 
moment. And after that Baldwin Paxton began: 

“It all made me think of H. G. Wells’ little 
book on the Salvaging of Civilization. It’s all 
very wonderful and I wish a great many people 
knew about it. But, after all, is that really 
a movement in the direction of saving the 
world? If everybody knew all that Malone has 
told us and ever so much more, would it bring 
the day of better things any nearer?” 

“It would at least mean that people would 
have a great fund of common knowledge about 
which they could talk,” declared Hunter Mor¬ 
rison. “And if a man with a message came 
along, there would be a great mass of common 
mental experience to which he could appeal. 
The world needs an intellectual common for all 
just about as much as it needs anything else.” 

“People could hardly know all these things 
without thinking about them,” ventured Tom 
Tabor. “And out of such thought all sorts 


THE CREATIVE PAST 


69 


of good things might come. The world can’t 
do much work on an empty stomach. And 
it can’t do much work on an empty mind.” 

“As a matter of fact,” said Waldo Bryant, 
“the more you know about the past the larger 
amount of material you have to misinterpret. 
If you have any panacea, you can write the 
history of the world in such a way that it seems 
to make just that remedy inevitable. A 
knowledge of history is a great thing. But 
it won’t bring the millennium. It may just 
bring a more brilliant chaos.” 

Morris MacDonald was now ready to speak. 
And his words proved the last for the day. 

“In the long run the laboratory does its work 
if men really know about the experiments. 
It is only when an old failure is forgotten that 
we make the same mistake again. Any par¬ 
ticular generation may have a brilliant chaos 
and try to justify it by history. But if the 
men of good will age after age know the sig¬ 
nificant elements in the past, you do get for¬ 
ward. Of course you have to keep making 
men of good will. And that is the reason that 
the New Testament contains the most sig¬ 
nificant series of documents which come out 
of the past.” 


IX. THE COLOR SCHEME OF THE 

WORLD 

Bowen Tillman had been reading Lothrop 
Stoddard’s Rising Tide of Color . The book 
captured his imagination. He perused it with 
a sort of fascinated dislike. For days he found 
it difficult to think of anything else. He got 
hold of other literature on the same subject. 
He sat in his study late at night thinking of 
the problem. He went among the varied 
peoples whom his own cosmopolitan parish 
served with many thoughts about the races 
surging in his mind. Then he reduced his 
thinking and his reading to a paper for the 
club. 

It was a clear cold winter’s day when the 
men came together and each one seemed to 
bring in some of the hard, vigorous tonic of 
the outer air. Soon overcoats were laid aside 
amid the exchange of vigorous greetings, and, 
mellowed by the warmth of the room, the 
members of the Club sat about the table wait¬ 
ing for the order of the day. 

Bowen Tillman had the presence of an orator 

70 


COLOR SCHEME OE THE WORLD 71 


and a voice whose varied and alluring modu¬ 
lations had their own share in holding the con¬ 
gregation of his great church. Even when he 
read he forgot his manuscript and addressed an 
invisible audience gathered all about the little 
group of listeners who chanced to be with him. 

“My subject/’ he said, “is ‘The Color Scheme 
of the World.’ ” 

There was a dangerous light in the eye of 
Benny Malone, but he resisted the temptation 
to interrupt. 

“The world now contains about a billion 
seven hundred million people,” began Tillman. 
“Roughly speaking five hundred and fifty mil¬ 
lions of them are white, five hundred millions 
of them are yellow, four hundred and fifty 
millions of them are brown, a hundred and 
fifty millions of them are black and forty mil¬ 
lions of them are red. There are two colored 
men for every white man in the world. At the 
beginning of the sixteenth century there were 
about seventy millions of white people in the 
world. The last four hundred years have been 
the great period of expansion and growth of 
power for the white race. When the Great 
War broke out the white race controlled prac¬ 
tically nine tenths of the territory of the world.” 


72 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


After this preliminary plunge into a sea of 
figures Bowen Tillman described the growth 
of the white race and the expansion of its 
influence. He discussed its contributions to 
art and letters and the practical sciences. He 
showed how it produced the industrial revolu¬ 
tion which transformed the life of the world. 
Then he placed the races as to their present 
distribution: the yellow race principally in 
Asia, the brown race in southern Asia and 
northern Africa, the black race primarily in 
Africa, and the red race in the southern part 
of North America and in South America; the 
white race in Europe and North America and 
Australia and, as far as lordship is concerned, 
in much of the remainder of the world. He 
spoke of the easy and assured mastery of the 
white race, of its almost insolent consciousness 
of race superiority and the power for sustained 
dominance. Then he turned to the war be¬ 
tween Japan and Russia as the amazing event 
which revealed the capacity of a people be¬ 
longing to the yellow race to defeat a people 
belonging to the white race. He described the 
fashion in which the thrill of that achieve¬ 
ment went through the world of color. Then 
he described the suicidal character of the 


COLOR SCHEME OF THE WORLD 73 


World War when nations of the white race 
fought each other on a scale unparalleled and 
brought in men of color to slay their white 
foes. He analyzed the world unrest following 
the war, when every race began to cherish 
the hope through its own power or by means 
of some alliance to have a share in limiting the 
dominion of the white masters of the world. 
He appraised the strength and ambition of 
Japan, the mighty stirrings among the forces 
of Islam, the new and sharp race consciousness 
among Negroes, and even the cool, observant 
watchfulness of the red man, ready to have 
his share in any new alignment of the forces 
of the world. 

It was all done at a white heat of personal 
interest and it was easy to see that he was 
carrying his hearers with him. Then Tillman 
turned to the one great question—the relation 
of all this to the progress of the Christian forces 
of the world. He used bold and bitter words 
to picture the horror of that war of remorse¬ 
less and savage races struggling for the pos¬ 
session of the world, the war toward which 
we are drifting unless the forces of sanity and 
good will and justice and brotherhood can 
come into control of the destinies of men. He 


74 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


spoke of the missionary enterprise as the one 
hope for the safety of the world. He described 
that mobilization of the forces of all Christen¬ 
dom which would pour the energies of the 
civilization created by Christ into the great¬ 
est of all endeavors, the endeavor to win the 
world for a permanent life of good will. He 
closed with two burning sentences: “Racial 
rivalry and hatred pursued to their bitter end 
will destroy civilization. The principles of 
Jesus, if accepted, will make it possible for 
the races to live together in the same world 
with mutual respect and with permanent 
friendliness.” 

There was a little period of rather tense 
quiet when the paper had been read. Then 
Baldwin Paxton broke the silence: 

“I’m afraid the problem is even more difficult 
than Tillman made out,” he said. “It is easy 
to talk about good will. But with something 
like sixty million Japanese living in territory 
whose productive area is about the size of the 
State of Montana and crying out for room 
while the civilized world goes about the task 
of closing doors in all the continents, you have 
a hard set of economic facts which will not 
yield to sentiment.” 


COLOR SCHEME OF THE WORLD 75 


“Opening the doors would only be a tem¬ 
porary alleviation,” said Monroe Burton. “You 
would lower the standard of living wherever 
the doors were opened, and that relentless old 
law of Malthus teaches us that the land of 
larger opportunity would soon fill up, and 
then there would be just the same pressure in 
a depleted world.” 

Hunter Morrison sprang into the discussion 
at this point: “A scientific nation may not 
find Malthus so relentless,” he said. “The 
only way to prevent the nations from economic 
war at last is by the control of the fertility of 
the races. Overproduction is more than a 
folly; it is crime.” 

“France has learned the secret of limiting 
the birth rate all too well. And France doesn’t 
need to know that secret. China and Japan 
have not learned it at all. And it is the secret 
they need most of all to know.” It was Coulton 
Moore who threw this remark into the cauldron 
of discussion which was fairly seething by this 
time. 

Waldo Bryant now spoke up: 

“It is all being complicated by the writers 
of the flashing and flaming sentences which 
the public likes to read,” he said. “Recently 


76 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


a novelist of little literary distinction but with 
an astonishing popular vogue has written an 
attack on Japanese character whose inhuman 
brutality is almost unbelievable. And multi¬ 
tudes of people have their opinions formed by 
just such writers. The problem is desperate 
enough if we all keep our heads. And that 
is just what some writers would prevent.” 

Tom Tabor was knitting his brow as the 
discussion went on. Now he spoke. “There 
are a good many people in California and 
British Columbia and Australia who will tell 
you that you face the eloquence of very ugly 
facts when the bars are let down. I don’t 
wonder that some of them become hectic. The 
lowering of the standard of living simply means 
the driving out—indeed, the destruction at 
last—of the higher type of civilization.” 

There was now a good deal of rapid cross¬ 
fire discussion. And then there was an ex¬ 
pectant quiet as Henry Alton spoke. 

“Nobody can deny the difficulties of the 
situation,” he said. “And the thoughtful know 
that the fuse is laid to many a dangerous 
explosive. But just because race hatred means 
the destruction of what is good in all the races 
the real statesmen of every race are eager to 


COLOR SCHEME OF THE WORLD 77 


find a way. The invasion of the Orient by 
the moving wheels of our modern machines is 
a step toward that common life for all the 
world which will have its own bearing at last 
on the economic pressure. Slowly but inev¬ 
itably we will move toward a life for all the 
world where the workers of one land will not 
be capable of underselling the workers of 
another. The new transportation and the fac¬ 
tories are already transforming the Orient. 
There will be terrible labor struggles. But 
at last the economic life of the world will find 
that equilibrium in which there is a new prom¬ 
ise of safety. Then with a scientific under¬ 
standing of the relation between race productiv¬ 
ity and the production of food and all material 
things a new equilibrium between the supply 
and demand of people and the necessities of 
life will be established. The patience to work 
and wait for this and the character to secure 
it must be provided by the motives of the 
Christian religion. I agree with Tillman that 
the missionary enterprise has at its heart and 
in its brain the hope of the world.” 


X. GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH 


During the latter part of the month of 
January most of the religious weeklies had 
been full of accounts of evangelistic services. 
And even the great dailies of the city had given 
a good deal of space to some of the more spec¬ 
tacular services held for the spreading abroad 
of the experience and practice of the Chris¬ 
tian faith. New fires of devotion were burn¬ 
ing everywhere and for a time religion had 
become the main topic of discussion among 
all classes of people in the great town. Fletcher 
Hilton was in his element. He conducted 
wonderfully effective evangelistic meetings in 
his own church. Then he gave himself unspar¬ 
ingly to helping other ministers in similar 
work. He looked a trifle thin but very much 
alive as he came to the meeting of the Club 
on the day when he was to read the paper. 
There was a hint of the light never seen on 
sea or land in his eye, but he carried himself 
with his usual quiet poise. 

“I don’t believe he has any paper,” declared 
Tom Tabor as Hilton entered. “He’s been 

78 


GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH 


79 


too busy conducting five meetings a day and 
eight on Sunday. He hasn’t had time to put 
his pen on a page of paper.” 

“Evangelists do not need heads. They only 
need hearts,” said Hunter Morrison. 

“That’s where you are completely wrong. 
It takes all the brains a man has to do a good 
piece of evangelistic work. And more brains 
than most of us are able to bring to the task 
would find use and opportunity. In any event 
I’ve read a book a week through all this period 
of special meetings. And the paper I am going 
to read to-day was finished last night.” 

“Bravo for Hilton!” cried Morris Mac¬ 
Donald, heartily. The minister who found 
time to read always roused the enthusiasm of 
this professor of systematic theology. 

Hilton looked at him with a twinkle in his eye. 

“Really I have a right to that bravo,” he 
said. “I have read five books on doctrine in 
the last seven weeks. And one of them was 
The Christian Faith , by your old friend, Olin 
Alfred Curtis. That book is worth a whole 
course in theology to me.” 

By this time the men were all in their places. 
Hilton carefully took his paper from the inner 
pocket of his coat. 


80 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


“My subject is ‘A Napoleon of Evangelism/ ” 
he began. “And I am going to ask you to con¬ 
sider the life of General William Booth.” 

Commissioner G. S. Railton’s Life of General 
William Booth and the two fat volumes in which 
that powerful journalist, Harold Begbie, dis¬ 
cusses the General had been read and mastered 
by Hilton. He had personal contacts with the 
work of the Army, and he reached out occa¬ 
sionally for a comment or an estimate from 
some contemporary writer. You had a feeling 
that he had written in love about a man 
whose career had captured his imagination and 
inspired his own life. 

The paper began by reminding the listeners 
that in 1829, the year of the birth of William 
Booth, George the Fourth was on the throne 
of England and Andrew Jackson became the 
President of the United States. There was a 
brief account of the ambitious business man 
who lost everything in unfortunate speculation 
who was the father of Booth and of the proud, 
reserved woman nursing her humiliation when 
financial reverses brought hardship to the 
home: a mother whose memories were brighter 
than her hopes. It was not a religious home, 
and it is remarkable that out of it came the 


GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH 


81 


mightiest exponent of evangelical religion whom 
the century produced. Hilton described the 
beginning of Booth’s religious life in a vital 
and commanding personal acceptance and 
appropriation of the realities of evangelical 
piety when he was but a lad. He pictured his 
early efforts to win others to the faith which 
had given a new gladness to his own spirit. 
Then there was an account of his days and 
years of struggle, of the period when he was a 
Methodist minister, and of the fashion in which 
his vivid and eager spirit wrought in the midst 
of surroundings hardened by convention and 
secured results which both shocked and startled 
many of his brethren. The tale of his court¬ 
ship of Catherine Mumford was told with 
hearty sympathy. You felt the virile intel¬ 
lectual power and sturdy will of the young 
woman and the combination of humble affection 
and flashes of masterfulness in the young man. 
You came at last to the crisis when Booth 
refused to compromise with a church which 
failed to give him a real standing room and 
with his wife embarked upon the unknown seas 
not knowing what the future w^ould bring 
forth. You watched the first beginnings of 
the Salvation Army and its formal organiza- 


82 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


tion in 1878. You were allowed to look into 
the soul of Booth and see the consuming pas¬ 
sion for the least and the lowest and the last, 
a passion which mastered his mind, dominated 
his conscience, and swept through his heart in 
gales of ever-renewed intensity of feeling. You 
witnessed the strange and spectacular methods 
of the army. You watched its coming to blows 
with the liquor traffic. You saw the flash of 
its sword as it fought impurity. With utter 
abandon and with utter daring it set itself 
against those dark and disintegrating forces 
which destroy men and deplete civilizations. 
You saw the forces of evil gather their wrath¬ 
ful energies together for the complete undoing 
of this new foe. Y r ou were amazed at the fury 
and the malignity of the persecution. You 
were astonished at the sincere and good men 
who opposed the Army. Then you saw the 
clouds clearing. You saw the Army spreading 
all over the world. You saw its General recog¬ 
nized as one of the most distinguished men of 
his age. You saw Oxford give him the honor¬ 
ary degree of Doctor of Civil Laws. You saw 
London in formal and splendid fashion give 
him the freedom of the city. You saw him 
welcomed in audience by the King of his own 


GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH 


83 


land and by many another ruler. You saw him 
travel in triumph among the nations, every¬ 
where received with amazing honor and rever¬ 
ence. And all the while you saw him busy 
perfecting his world-wide organization for bring¬ 
ing the gospel to those in darkest and most 
terrible need. You witnessed the beginning 
and growth of his social work until he was 
doing as much for the bodies as he was doing 
for the souls of men. You saw him bend under 
tragic grief, as when his wife died after years 
of intolerable suffering with a disease which 
stabs its victim with repeated and cumulative 
hours of pain. You saw him when, blind at 
last, he declared that he had tried to serve 
God and the people with his eyes and now he 
would try to serve God and the people with¬ 
out his eyes. You saw the coming of the last 
hour when the valiant old man, every inch a 
soldier and every inch a general, laid down 
his sword. 

As he came to the close of the paper Hilton 
read passages from Nicholas Vachel Lindsay’s 
poem “General William Booth Enters into 
Heaven” 


1 Copyrighted by the Macmillan Company, Publishers. 



84 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


“Booth led boldly with his big bass drum— 

(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) 

The saints smiled gravely and they said ‘He’s come* 
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) 

Walking lepers followed, rank on rank. 

Lurching bravoes from the ditches dank. 

Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale— 
Minds still passion ridden, soul powers frail— 
Vermin-eaten saints with moldy breath. 

Unwashed legions with the ways of Death— 

(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)” 

Then in a few final words Hilton pictured 
Booth’s vast dream of triumphantly evangel¬ 
izing the whole world. With all his social 
work Booth never doubted that the funda¬ 
mental matter is to bring every individual man 
and woman and child into right relations with 
God. Everything else comes from that. 
Dreaming this dream of world-wide evangelism 
Booth left his footprints on every continent. 
There are living monuments to his successful 
evangelism in every city in the world. He 
knew that if you give men a heart of peace 
and a heart of love and a heart of triumph, 
they can renew every aspect of the life of the 
world. He was the Napoleon of evangelists 
because he planned and worked upon a world¬ 
wide scale. His armies fought in every con- 


GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH 


85 


tinent. They won victories wherever men felt 
the pain and the burden and the bewilderment 
and the tragedy of life. The sword of the 
great old General is at rest. But the fight is 
still on. 

When the paper came to an end nearly every 
member of the club seemed to want to speak. 
Tribute and criticism, enthusiasm and depre¬ 
ciation mingled in their speech. Bowen Tillman 
was unqualified in his approval. 

“Booth knew the secret. We must learn it 
from him,” he said. 

Waldo Bryant was full of hesitations. 

“Why must you violate the canons of good 
taste in order to do what is good for the soul?” 
he asked. 

Hunter Morrison mingled criticism and 
praise. 

“I admire his social work,” he said. “But 
what an old autocrat he was! The Czar was 
not so absolute.” 

Baldwin Paxton broke in unexpectedly here: 

“You have to have authority if you are going 
to have efficiency,” he said. “There is a kind 
of democracy for which you pay by being 
unable to do anything deep or permanent in 
the life of the world.” 


86 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


Coulton Moore was full of eager praise for 
the way in which Booth understood the people 
society never appreciates. “He had enough of 
the heart of a Bohemian to know that Bohemia 
produces princes,” he declared. 

Henry Alton now entered the lists. 

“Men like Booth leave much for others to 
do. They are like men who plow. They turn 
up a good deal of soil which does not look very 
inviting. They are like men who sow seed. 
There is nothing particularly artistic about the 
seed or the soil. But they are necessary if 
you are going to have the beautiful and golden 
harvest which so charms the fastidious, aesthetic 
eye.” He looked with a wry little smile at 
Bryant. 

It was Hilton who added the final word. 

“The wonder of the love of God never 
faded in the mind of Booth,” he said. “He 
had the mind of a great organizer and he kept 
the heart of an eager child. It was the child’s 
heart in him which spoke to the child’s heart 
of the world.” 


XI. “SAINT WILLIAM AND THE 
DRAGON” 

Baldwin Paxton was usually calm. He was 
more than that. He was precise. He was 
meticulous in the carefulness of his writing 
and even of his speech. But to-day there was 
a little flush of red in his cheek. There was an 
unusual vibrancy in his voice. And some of his 
sentences betrayed an unusual inrush of feeling. 
It was evident that he was deeply stirred. 

The Twelve Merry Fishermen sat about the 
table in characteristic attitudes. Usually a 
paper by Paxton was very informing but not at 
all exciting. Everybody came to the club feeling 
comfortable and friendly. They were going to 
have a good time and listen to a good paper. 
But the moment Baldwin Paxton announced 
his subject the men sat a little straighter 
and a new interest came into their eyes. 

“I shall discuss ‘The Attack on Science,’ ” 
the reader of the day began. 

Baldwin Paxton was more than familiar 
with the history of his subject. He began 
with a general outline in which he was obvi¬ 
ously much indebted to Dr. Andrew D. White’s 

87 


88 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


History of the Warfare of Science with Theology 
in Christendom , and in dealing with the latter 
part of the nineteenth century he reflected 
something of the mood and method of Pro¬ 
fessor William North Rice’s Christian Faith in 
an Age of Science. He paid loving tribute to 
the life and labors of Charles Darwin, referring 
with much appreciation to the fine influence of 
Dr. S. Parkes Cadman’s book Charles Darwin 
and Other English Thinkers. Step by step he 
moved through the story of the struggles of 
the great representatives of precise observation 
and accurate thinking from the days of Roger 
Bacon through the time of Galileo on to the 
storm which burst about the head of the 
scientific thinkers in the last half of the nine¬ 
teenth century. It was evident that devotion 
to the finding and the expressing of truth was 
a central part of the religion of Baldwin Paxton. 
The great scientists were his saints. The men 
who obstructed their path were the men of 
evil spirit whose influence should be cast out 
of the world. He spoke of the infinite patience 
of scientific investigation, of its noble hesita¬ 
tion and caution, of the fashion in which 
slowly and with endless pains the significant 
facts were collected and at last upon a sound 


“SAINT WILLIAM AND THE DRAGON” 89 


foundation the structure of generalization was 
built. He told the tale of the superstitions 
cast out by science and the new and helpful 
knowledge which science has poured bounti¬ 
fully into the lap of humanity. He pictured 
science as a priestess who was to save the 
world from ignorance and folly and failure and 
point the way to stable and orderly life. Then 
he came to the matter which it was evident 
had inspired the paper. He took up the attack 
Mr. William Jennings Bryan has put forth in 
many places and ways, perhaps most character¬ 
istically in the James Sprunt Lectures, pub¬ 
lished under the title In His Image. The 
position of Mr. Bryan was summed up in his 
own words: “I have called attention to the 
destructive influence exerted by the doctrine 
of evolution, as applied to man, and have 
pointed out how Darwinism weakens faith in 
God, makes a mockery of prayer, undermines 
belief in immortality, reduces Christ to the 
stature of a man, lessens the sense of brother¬ 
hood, and encourages brutishness.” From this 
summary Paxton proceeded to a close analysis 
of the chapter of Mr. Bryan’s book dealing 
with the origin of man. He declared that Mr. 
Bryan confused every issue he raised, set in 


90 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


false light the movements he discussed, and 
showed himself completely unable to under¬ 
stand the scientific mind and the scientific 
method. He described Mr. Bryan’s views of 
the Bible as a set of mechanical conceptions 
which could not be brought to the test pro¬ 
vided by the biblical documents and could not 
survive even a little candid investigation. 
Then he came as near to being eloquent as 
was ever possible to this quiet man with his 
precise mind as he described the larger uni¬ 
verse, the larger thought of man, and the 
more vital thought of God which the general 
position of scientific evolutionists has made 
possible. “Science has rescued the Bible from 
the artificial hair-splitting of scholasticism. It 
has rescued theology from the barren distinc¬ 
tions of an arid type of metaphysics. It has 
put a growing man in a vast and potential 
world. And it has revealed a mighty and 
orderly universe in which it is easy for the 
Christian to find a mightier and more worthy 
God than he ever knew before.” 

So the paper closed. And there was the 
light of a great eagerness for talk in the eyes 
of every one of the men who sat about the 
table. It was Tom Tabor who began: 


“SAINT WILLIAM AND THE DRAGON” 91 


“I haven’t any illusions about Mr. Bryan,” 
he said. “I think he has a provincial mind 
attached to a gift for rhetoric and a capacity 
for the coining of clever phrases. But that 
isn’t all there is of Mr. Bryan. And I don’t 
like to lose the man in the Don Quixote. He 
isn’t all the while fighting windmills. There is 
a wealth of shrewd, homely wisdom about him. 
He is sound about every fundamental matter 
of morals. And if you leave out one or two 
chapters and an occasional paragraph the book 
In His Image is packed with the sort of sound 
practical talk it is good for young men to 
hear. I don’t think Saint William can con¬ 
quer the modern dragons, but I do think he’s 
a good, solid man for all that.” 

“All of which makes him the more dangerous 
when he is in a field of which he knows less than 
nothing,” broke in Hunter Morrison, bitterly. 
“I am not keen about the type of decadent criti¬ 
cism represented by a book like Main Street. 
But a man like Mr. Bryan reminds us that 
there is a Main-Street mind whose provincial 
cocksureness and untutored egotism is a men¬ 
ace to the intellectual life of the republic.” 

“I suppose you would prefer the emancipa¬ 
tion of H. L. Mencken with a world which 


92 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


smiles in superior wisdom at the Ten Com¬ 
mandments to the moral order in which Mr. 
Bryan believes that he lives,” threw in Fletcher 
Hilton, in a tone whose caustic cut was re¬ 
lieved by the friendly light in his eye. 

Bowen Tillman entered the lists at the 
moment. 

“That is just part of the tragedy of the 
whole situation. It isn’t true that only a pro¬ 
vincial can be a man of moral passion. But a 
man like Mr. Bryan makes it easy for a good 
many perplexed young people to think that 
it is so. And it is a travesty on the facts to 
claim that only a man who refused to live in 
the modern world can believe in the power 
of God and the potency of Christ. But Mr. 
Bryan puts many a person in the position of 
supposing that this is true. He is raising false 
dilemmas all the while. Again and again he 
says ‘this or that’ when he ought to say ‘this 
and that.’ ” 

Monroe Burton was listening intently. Now 
he spoke. 

“I am interested in Mr. Bryan rather as a 
symptom than as a physician,” he said. “And 
I find him a very significant symptom. He 
represents the impatience of the popular mind 


“SAINT WILLIAM AND THE DRAGON” 93 


with all thinking which robs life of inspiration 
and depletes its moral vigor and lessens its 
spiritual dynamic. His diagnosis may be in¬ 
correct. He may misplace his attack. But 
he does reflect an actual situation. And we 
must get a correct diagnosis and deal with 
the disease in an adequate way.” 

Fletcher Hilton spoke again: “I was interested 
in the bitter attack upon Darwin which one 
finds in Harold Begbie’s Life of General William 
Booth . He surely represents a very different 
type of mind and a much more cosmopolitan 
spirit. Yet he too hurled his spear in the 
direction of the author of the Descent of Man” 

Baldwin Paxton spoke a little more quickly 
than was his wont. 

“Of course Darwin could not say every¬ 
thing. And, of course, one method unchecked 
and unsupplemented does become dangerous. 
Nietzsche represents one Darwinian principle 
gone mad. But it is not right to blame Darwin 
for that. Prince Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid gives 
you the supplementing principle and would 
save any man from the mistakes of Nietzsche. 
With all his wide reading Begbie goes off on 
a tangent when he talks of Darwin.” 

Morris MacDonald was smiling a little in 


94 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


his quiet way. And when he spoke the men 
were willing to let him have the last word of 
the afternoon. 

“It is necessary to discriminate. There is a 
science which sees in the uniformities of nature 
the expression of a mechanical and self-sufficient 
system of impersonal forces. There is a science 
which sees in the laws of nature the methods 
of God. One would slay the ethical and spiritual 
life of the world. The other will enrich it. 
There is a view of evolution which always 
interprets the higher in the terms of the lower. 
It deserves rather hard words. There is a 
type of evolution which always interprets the 
lower in the terms of the higher. It is in 
happy harmony with every sanction of the 
Christian faith. There is a view of the Bible 
which treats it as a corpse in order to dissect 
it. There is a view of the Bible which regards 
it as a living organism of spiritual power, and 
with all its remorseless analysis and study 
never forgets the informing and inspiring spirit. 
Science may be destructive and it may be 
constructive in all of these things. Scientists 
are like poets. There are a good many kinds. 
And you cannot attack poetry because of the 
bad poets.” 


XII. THE SCHOLAR AND THE PROPHET 


Somebody had been criticizing theological 
seminaries. In fact, a number of people had 
been saying and writing things which the 
most optimistic and friendly person could not 
call complimentary. Caustic and clever articles 
had been appearing in widely read weeklies, 
and popular masters of the platform had been 
having their own easy and quickly applauded 
fling. The schools of divinity were under fire. 
Morris MacDonald was much stirred by it all, 
and it was in the midst of the little storm that 
he came to the club with a paper on “The 
Scholar and the Prophet.” 

The men sat about the table in attitudes 
which expressed a good deal of relish. Mac¬ 
Donald was always thoughtful with a brilliant 
edge of fire blazing about the thought. And 
when he was really roused you could see mighty 
combat in the fiery furnace of his mind. 

He began by describing the shrewd and 
vital eloquence of the men of the pioneer 
period. You felt their nearness to all the hard 
actualities of that primitive life. You sensed 

95 


96 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 

X 

the rugged strength of their bodies. You saw 
the human heartiness of their bearing and the 
easy comradeship which came from their per¬ 
fect understanding of the life about them. 
And you felt the impact of that simple and 
childlike faith which entered the very Holy 
of holies and came back entirely sure of God 
and able to speak of him with commanding 
authenticity. 

Then MacDonald described the development 
of more highly articulated forms of life. He 
followed the trails of that expanding activity 
which conquered a continent and made the 
way for a more sophisticated civilization. 
Then he flung out upon larger highways and 
described the revolutions which were affecting 
the intellectual life of the whole world. He 
held particularly to the story of the critical 
analysis of the documents which go to make 
up the Old Testament and the New. The 
unearthing of J. E. D. and P. in the Hexateuch, 
the mining in that mighty mass of prophecies 
which is called the book of Isaiah, and the 
discovery of the great unknown prophet of the 
exile were discussed. Then in rapid and 
trenchant phrase the hearers were carried 
through the outstanding matters of debate in 


SCHOLAR AND PROPHET 


97 


the criticism of the books which come from the 
older and the newer dispensation. All this 
was seen as a by-product of that scientific 
movement of the human mind whose great 
devotion was accuracy and whose high enthusi¬ 
asm was the candid following of truth wherever 
it led. He moved out into a discussion of that 
historical science which is based upon an 
almost microscopic consideration of all the 
source materials and upon the basis of the 
most prolonged and careful appraisal of the 
materials, a gradual and sure rising to those 
generalizations which constitute the structure of 
history as it moves toward completion. It is 
in this atmosphere that the well-trained college 
man of to-day lives and moves and has his 
being. Such a man sits in the pew and a man 
with the same training and a man who under¬ 
stands all of his passwords must be in the 
pulpit. It is the task of the contemporary 
theological seminary to train the student 
formed in this modern mold in such a fashion 
that he will come forth a prophet. 

That there are certain intrinsic difficulties 
must be frankly admitted. The mood of metic¬ 
ulous and detailed accuracy of observation and 
of poised judicial estimate is not just that of 


98 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


the passionate interpreter of a flaming passion. 
Professor Paul Shorey’s notable phrase, “the 
passionate pursuit of passionless perfection/’ is 
at least capable of being interpreted as the 
description of a process which might eventuate 
in the production of an exquisite marble statue 
but hardly in a man pulsing with the pas¬ 
sionate energy of a great evangel. There may 
seem to be a deep gulf fixed between the expert 
scholar fearing nothing so much as the fleck 
of a personal prejudice upon his judgment and 
the flaming herald blowing all the trumpets 
which call into action the deepest feelings of 
men. As a matter of fact, however, the prophet 
is never safe without the scholar. And the 
scholar is never safe without the prophet. 
Scholarship without the fires of a great enthusi¬ 
asm for commanding ideals becomes hard and 
cold and scholastic. It becomes the petty 
preoccupation with insignificant details. It be¬ 
comes a double entry bookkeeping of the mind 
which has lost creative enthusiasm and dis¬ 
criminating insight. And prophecy without 
scholarship becomes a thing of overgrown and 
tropical luxuriance, a mood of hot feeling 
untutored and untempered by the discipline of 
a careful regard for facts and patient pursuit 


SCHOLAR AND PROPHET 


99 


of truth. It becomes hectic and fanatical at 
last and loses the respect and regard of sober 
and solid men. The theological seminary is to 
perform the nuptials of poise and passion. 
It is to inspire the accuracy of the painstaking 
scholar and the passion of the enthusiastic 
messenger of the evangel. 

There is only one way in which this can be 
done. The student who is learning to know 
truth through the discipline of patient research 
must all the while be learning to know God 
in the honest wonder of a personal fellowship. 
The growth of his mind power to classify facts 
must at every point be paralleled by the growth 
of his inner life in the apprehension of the 
eternal realities. It is the glory of the true 
school of divinity that in its halls scholarship 
is baptized with devotion and spiritual passion 
is stabilized by patient research and unhesi¬ 
tating candor of mind. The man who unites 
the accuracy of the scholar and the creative 
energy of the man who has learned the secrets 
of the inner communion has the future of the 
church and the inspiration of the world in his 
hands. 

The final paragraphs of MacDonald’s paper 
were taken up with a sharp rebuke of those 


100 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


who would chain the mind of the church and 
of the other group which would discredit all 
the insight of the hour of the hidden com¬ 
munion. Then in words quick with his own 
conviction he portrayed the work of the school 
alive in mind and in heart which trained the 
preachers and the leaders of a fearless church, 
a church fearless in mind because it saw be¬ 
fore it always the presence of its living Lord. 

The men were not quick to speak at the 
close of the paper. But at length Bowen 
Tillman broke the silence. 

“It was Dale who did the thing for me,” 
he said. “I frankly confess that I came out 
of theological school a bit confused. Then I 
got into The Living Christ and the Four Gospels , 
and before I had finished it Dale had given 
me a platform upon which to stand. No 
doubt much has happened in New Testament 
criticism since that time. But I venture to 
believe that the fundamental principles an¬ 
nounced in this book hold true in spite of all 
the changes through which we have passed.” 

“It was the lecture on ‘Inspiration’ in James 
Denney’s Studies in Theology which gave me a 
standing ground,” said Fletcher Hilton. “And 
as long as Denney lived he was a sort of light- 



< < 


SCHOLAR AND PROPHET 


101 


house to me. The prophet’s passion and the 
scholar’s careful research characterized him to 
the very end.” 

“If this is to be an experience meeting, 
Coleridge did it for me,” added Waldo Bryant. 
“His one phrase, ‘the Bible finds me,’ marked 
an epoch in my life.” 

“And it was Peter Forsyth who helped me 
to find myself,” said James Clayton. “One 
series of lectures which I heard him deliver 
gave me a knowledge of the path where I 
found both certainty and freedom.” 

“William Newton Clarke was my guide, 
philosopher and friend,” said Hunter Morrison. 
“He joined sweetness and light and spiritual 
conviction in a way which gave me just what 
I needed.” 

“Henry Drummond gave me the clue,” said 
Tom Tabor. “It was not so much anything 
he said as the attitude which he taught me. 
And that attitude has been the thing I have 
needed all the while.” 

“Lyman Abbott said the thing I needed ‘in 
my hour of stress and strain,’ ” said Coulton 
Moore. ‘‘He did for me what Drummond did 
for Tabor. It was not ideas I needed. It 
was a spirit. And he gave me the spirit.” 


102 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


Benny Malone was chuckling quietly: 

“I fancy different things were done by these 
different men. For they did live in rather 
different worlds,” he said. 

“At least,” added Henry Alton, “these men 
all made it easier for eager truth-seeking minds 
to find a path in an age of transition. And 
it was a great service, different as were their 
methods and far apart as they were in many 
theological positions.” 

“But what about the divinity schools?” 
asked Benny Malone. 

“They are sure to produce the scholars. 
We may have to help them to produce the 
preachers,” said Fletcher Hilton. 

There was a curious half-hostile light in 
Morris MacDonald’s eye. But he said no 
more that day. 


XIII. THE FAITH ONCE DELIVERED 
AND OFTEN INTERPRETED 

The Lenten period was approaching and 
every man in the Club was busy in his own 
way with the task of preparing to show forth 
anew the vitality of the ancient faith in the 
new age. They held many different positions 
in matters of fundamental philosophy and in 
matters of method. But in each man’s heart 
burned the fire of a deep devotion, and each 
was consumingly eager to be a compelling 
voice as well as a trusted guide in the church. 
So it came about that there was something 
subtly different about the atmosphere of the 
meeting as they gathered on this particular 
day. Perhaps this was partly owing to the 
fact that Morris MacDonald once again was 
to read the paper. He made his chair of sys¬ 
tematic theology a place all shining with the 
wonder of the gospel, and quick with the sense 
of every potent movement in contemporary 
thought, and full of the energy of close and 
painstaking dialectic. When he came to the 

Club with a paper the men knew that in some 

103 


104 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


arresting fashion they would see the Eternal 
making itself at home in the midst of the 
temporal. 

The typewritten manuscript which Mac¬ 
Donald held in his hand was a model of 
neatness and good typing. He was always fas¬ 
tidious about these things. Malone once de¬ 
clared that he had the mind of an intellectual 
viking and the precise habits of one’s maiden 
aunt. His voice had a touch of that uncon¬ 
scious quality of authority which comes from 
years of research and thought and teaching. 

Very quietly but with a certain arresting 
note in his speech MacDonald read his subject, 
“Three Little Books and the Changing World.” 
The books were these: The Reasonableness of the 
Christian Faith , by Professor David S. Cairns, 
of Aberdeen; The Divine Initiative , by Pro¬ 
fessor H. R. Mackintosh, of Edinburgh; and 
The Universality of Christ , by William Temple, 
the Bishop of Manchester. 

The paper began with a statement of the 
fashion in which each age inevitably produces 
its own interpretation of the Christian faith. 
This does not mean that a new faith is created 
for each age. There is a marvelous continuity 
in spite of all the differences. The Summa of 


THE FAITH ONCE DELIVERED 105 


Saint Thomas Aquinas is different enough 
from the Institutes of John Calvin. But, 
after all, it is one faith about which they are 
talking. Yet, in spite of all the subtle con¬ 
tinuity from Paul to Augustine and from 
Augustine to Luther, it remains true that the 
deep and throbbing experience of each age 
must be caught up and utilized by the inter¬ 
preters of the Christian faith. Feudalism gives 
thought forms to Anselm and it is Hugo 
Grotius, the founder of international law, who 
interprets the death of Christ in the terms of 
public justice. 

In every age Christianity comes to new power 
when once the men who understand and love 
the age and who also understand and love the 
Christian faith express the two together in 
words which speak in the very vernacular of 
the time and yet ring with the ageless splendor 
of the Christian religion. The three little books 
by Professor Cairns, Professor Mackintosh, and 
Bishop Temple show in an informal and yet in an 
earnest way how this work is being done to-day. 
And it is important to remember that each book 
had its origin in addresses delivered to groups 
of young university students eager to find their 
way in this fascinating and chaotic time. 


106 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


MacDonald took time to call attention to 
the fashion in which each of the authors with 
whom he was dealing heartily accepted the 
accredited results of modern biblical scholar¬ 
ship and was cordially friendly to all the close 
and careful habits of the scientific mind. This 
friendliness did not mean an uncritical accept¬ 
ance of any position propounded by some 
scientific authority. It did mean the most 
eager belief that there is no impassable gulf 
between the scientist and the Christian. There 
are not two kinds of truth in the world. There 
are two and more than two characteristic ways 
of approaching one truth. The eye and the 
ear do not fight because they have different 
processes of access to reality. As a matter of 
fact, each needs the other. 

There was a brief characterization of each 
of the three books: the brilliant literary style 
of Cairns with its flashes of color and all his 
skill in showing that the riddle of the world 
was only made vaster by the rejection of 
Christianity, that science itself in all its creative 
work takes leaps of faith and then verifies by 
slow processes of testing the data, his tri¬ 
umphant conclusion that the one life and the 
one deed do release forces whose authenticity 


THE FAITH ONCE DELIVERED 107 


can be verified in history—all these things 
were set forth with a certain vivid power. The 
lofty dialectic of Mackintosh, his marshaling 
of the elements of human need, his setting 
forth of the elements of the divine response, 
his portrayal of the human meeting of the 
deed of God in history, his masterly setting 
forth of the corporate quality of the Christian 
faith; this Calvinism refined and filled with 
generous human passion was presented by 
MacDonald with a certain passion of his own; 
then the closely wrought structure of Bishop 
Temple’s philosophical argument was outlined: 
his vigorous contention that the universal must 
become concrete if it is to have any actual 
meaning in the life of men, that only spirit can 
interpret matter, that only love can express 
the universal in every conceivable human 
relationship—all this leading to the conclusion 
that there is the most definite possibility and 
actuality in respect of a universal religion; 
and concluding with the test of the work of 
the Christian faith on the field of history, 
asserting that negatively the un-Christian thing 
always goes down and that Christianity has 
renewed the world in just so much as it has 
been really taken seriously: the careful processes 



108 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


of the highly trained thinker were reflected both 
in the material with which MacDonald dealt 
and the way in which he handled it. By 
many a happy detailed quotation he showed 
how the three men were at home in every 
aspect of contemporary thought and feeling 
and action, and how, in spite of their differ¬ 
ences, they had the most amazing fund of 
things in common, and each had come to a 
perfectly fresh and commanding apprehension 
of the historic faith. The sense of the ultimate 
lordship of Christ, the sense of the unique 
potency of the deed on Calvary, the appre¬ 
hension of the reign of personality, of the 
majesty of love and of the fellowship of a 
brotherhood of friendly men whose corporate 
life is to renew the word—these great and 
creative conceptions cease to be ideas as we 
read these books. They become luminous 
forces in the spiritual life. They become the 
creative inspirations of a new world. They 
become the supreme realities of experience. 

When MacDonald had finished there was a 
rather prolonged silence. Henry Alton then 
opened the discussion: 

“A paper like that makes one believe in the 
renaissance of theology,” he said. “Of course 


THE FAITH ONCE DELIVERED 109 


it will be so fresh and vital a theology that a 
good many people will not recognize it as 
theology at all. They will only know that it 
is wonderfully real and gripping and mastering.” 

Waldo Bryant spoke up: 

“Cairns is a good illustration of the wedlock 
between literature and theology. When a man 
of letters whose style is dripping with the 
beauties of the ages thinks clearly about 
religion and writes about it, you have a style 
which is enough to capture the most inveterate 
hater of formal doctrine. The men of letters 
are at last to save the theologians.” 

“At last! Do you think a theologian with a 
style is a new phenomenon? Go back to 
Augustine!” said Tom Tabor, who was all the 
while enriching his life at the fountains of 
patristic learning. 

“I’ll admit the Confessions,” replied Bryant. 
“But O the arid deserts through which theo¬ 
logians who did not know how to write have 
carried us!” 

Baldwin Paxton was waiting to speak in 
his careful and precise way. 

“It seems to me that all the three men mix 
up imagination and actuality. After all, there 
is a difference between a fact and a poem. 


110 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


I do not find the metaphysics of an earlier 
period more attractive because expressed by 
men of charming speech who have mastered 
the scientific vernacular. After all, they are 
trying to put the old wine of early speculation 
into the new bottles. It is a dangerous experi¬ 
ment. I prefer to let the ideals of Jesus stand 
in their own right. Then his leadership is not 
endangered if I have to change my theory of 
his person or my philosophy of the universe.” 

“But that’s just the point,” said Fletcher 
Hilton. “You have to have a certain set of 
convictions about the nature of the universe 
and about Jesus himself if his ideals are to be 
kept authentic.” 

It was an old battle between the two, and 
each was content on this particular day with 
bearing witness to his position. 

Hunter Morrison was now speaking: 

“I like these men because they do see that 
man is more than an individual. They see 
that he is a society. Almost Mackintosh per¬ 
suades me to become an evangelical.” This 
last with a friendly and whimsical look at 
Fletcher Hilton. 

Monroe Burton closed the discussion: 

“I have read and reread these books,” he 


THE FAITH ONCE DELIVERED 111 


said. “And the thing which I remember most 
about them is this. Each author sees that al 
the aspects of life must be met and interpreted 
by a triumphant religion. And so it is the 
versatility of the Christian faith which they 
bring to the reader. It is not only as deep 
as the sorest tragedy. It is as many sided 
as life. It can interpret the mind and the 
conscience and the heart and the taste. These 
books made me see in a perfectly new way 
what a great thing it is to have the freedom 
of the city of God.” 


XIV. PHILOSOPHY, EXPOSITION, AND 

SOCIAL PASSION 


Henry Alton was reading the paper of the 
day. 

“My theme,” he announced, tersely, “is 
‘A Synthetic Mind.’ ” 

“By a man who never saw anything un¬ 
steadily or in fragments,” interrupted Benny 
Malone. 

The men sat expectantly in their chairs. 
“Alton is never so concrete as when he is 
dealing with principles, and never so universal 
as when he is dealing with individuals,” Morris 
MacDonald had declared once. It was a com¬ 
bination which always stirred and roused the 
minds of his hearers. 

“I am going to build what I have to say 
about the life of a vigorous leader whom you 
all know,” began Henry Alton. “And the man 
is Bishop Francis J. McConnell.” 

There was a little movement of quickened 
interest at that. Then the men settled down 
to listen. The first part of the paper was dis¬ 
tinctly biographical. It told the story of a 

112 


PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL PASSION 113 


deep-eyed boy growing up in a Methodist 
parsonage, with a keen and masterful preacher 
as a father and a woman of brooding mysticism 
and solid strength of character as a mother. 
It followed the lad through college and into 
theological seminary. The theological sem¬ 
inary was the Divinity School of Boston Uni¬ 
versity. And the days were those when that 
philosopher with the flashing mind and the 
tongue tipped with ironic flame, Dr. Borden 
P. Bowne, made his professor’s chair an intel¬ 
lectual throne. It was the pungent wit of 
Professor Bowne which first attracted young 
McConnell. But soon his own mind was 
awakened and began to work as it had never 
worked before. No subtle trail of philosophical 
exploration was too difficult for the keen young 
thinker who responded to every intellectual 
challenge of his teacher with a sort of eager 
joy. It is one thing to be attracted by a great 
teacher and follow a few of his courses; it is 
quite another to give all the patient industry 
and all the long pursuit of technical attain¬ 
ment required to become the master of the 
point of view of a powerful thinker. It was 
the second thing which McConnell did. He 
became one of three or four men who in the 


114 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


whole course of the teaching of Dr. Bowne 
made his teaching completely their own. It 
was no matter of slavish assent. There was 
independence and there was constant personal 
grapple. But the able young man was wise 
enough to see that it was worth his while to 
become entirely at home in every part of his 
teacher’s system. And he made his own too 
the tale of the long pursuit of philosophical 
speculation from the days of the first inquiring 
Greeks. The whole process meant everything 
in the direction of the quickening of his own 
mind and the developing of his own intellectual 
life. It laid a foundation of solidity and 
strength for whatever mental work he might 
do in any field. Before long he was a pastor 
capable and able and devoted to his work. 
He had more than a touch of reserve. He was 
the pastor of men’s minds more than of the 
surface life of thoughtlessness. But there was 
a flash of sympathy from the depths of his 
personality which had a way of shining out 
whenever there was the call of really deep 
need. About this time he began to be a writer 
of Biblical expositions. For years he inter¬ 
preted the Sunday-school lessons for one of 
the widely circulated journals of the church. 


PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL PASSION 115 


His work was something new in exposition. 
He had the most astonishing way of passing 
by the incidental and finding the essential. 
His training in philosophical dialectic was now 
beginning to bear practical fruit. He had a 
straightforward, forthright way of writing. 
He never went out of his way for literary effect. 
But he did have a sense of the power of a 
haunting phrase, and you never read far until 
you came to some sentence literally gleaming 
with vital power. There was a keen moving 
and at times an ironic mind. There was an 
impatience with make-believe and rhetoric 
and hectic feeling. The writing was just a 
little hard sometimes. But it was always 
honest and it was always capable of kindling 
the mind of the reader. Nobody knows quite 
how great has been the service rendered by 
these expositions carried on through so many 
years. The years passed swiftly. Dr. Mc¬ 
Connell became the able administrator of a 
growing university. Then he became a bishop 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Through 
it all his life as student and scholar was not 
allowed to suffer. Many books came from his 
pen as the years passed. Sometimes it was a 
matter of philosophical exposition clear and 


116 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


discerning, as in The Diviner Immanence. 
Sometimes it was a philosophy of ecclesiastical 
administration, as in the biography of that 
noble and commanding bishop, Edward Gayer 
Andrews. Sometimes it was a study of the 
modern man’s relation to the Bible, as in 
Understanding the Scriptures. Sometimes it 
was a wonderfully fresh and original applica¬ 
tion of the principles of democracy to Chris¬ 
tian thinking, as in Public Opinion and Theol¬ 
ogy. Sometimes it dealt with the most per¬ 
plexing problems which confront the man 
who is finding his way in this difficult age, as 
in Religious Certainty and The Increase of 
Faith. Sometimes it was a sympathetic view 
of the preacher’s tasks and problems, as in 
The Preacher and the People. All the while 
the thinker and administrator and ecclesiastical 
leader was becoming more and more a man 
who felt the burdens and the tragedies of our 
present social order. Those who followed his 
keen and cool and critical mind saw increasing 
evidences of a growing social passion. It be¬ 
came evident at last that a great fire was burn¬ 
ing in the crucible of that powerful mind. A 
characteristic expression of this aspect of Bishop 
McConnell’s life was the Report on the Steel 


PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL PASSION 117 


Strike of 1919 , issued by a commission of inquiry 
of which he was chairman. He now became a 
leader of the most commanding influence 
among those who would persuade the church 
to set seriously about the doing of the will 
of Christ in the very world of commerce and 
industry in which we live. 

It was a thrilling story, and Henry Alton 
told it well. Then he came to the moral of 
his tale. There are plenty of philosophers. 
There are plenty of expositors. There are 
plenty of men with social passion. The rare 
thing is to get all these in one man. He is 
indeed a man of synthetic mind. The habits 
of a philosopher steady and stabilize all his 
social activities. The habit of seeing the mes¬ 
sage of every part of the Bible in relation to 
the principles which emerge from a profound 
consideration of its meaning and of their 
relation to the modern experience of life gives 
a moral and spiritual depth to the intellectual 
life and a new richness and strength to the 
social passion. It isn't a case of Plato’s desire 
that philosophers be kings, though in a democ¬ 
racy you have something very like it when 
philosophers become interpreters and leaders 
in the movement for the industrial and social 


118 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


welfare of men and women and little children. 
When you get Luther and Erasmus together 
in one man you have a notable sort of leader. 

The men sat silent for a little while when 
the paper closed. Then Hunter Morrison 
opened the discussion: 

“I capitulated to Bishop McConnell a good 
many years ago,” he said. ‘T had been 
feeling lonely and unhappy and wondering if 
there was a place for me in the church. I 
heard one of the series of university lectures 
which express the very genius of McConnell’s 
mind. I knew at once that if the church had 
a place for him, it had a place for me, and 
life became easier and happier from that 
time on.” 

Waldo Bryant followed: 

4 ‘Bishop McConnell irritates me at times. 
I never have any doubt as to what he means 
to say. And, as the Judge has said, you get 
a live phrase every other minute. But why 
doesn’t a man who could do it if he really had 
the desire use the good old English speech 
with the beauty and grace and charm which 
make it the thing of loveliness it is its genius 
to be?” 

“I don’t think he wants to be a Matthew 


PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL PASSION 119 


Arnold, or a Walter Pater, or even a John 
Ruskin. It’s a good solid English he uses with 
plenty of pith and virility. He is about more 
important work than making a reproduction 
of some fine old English garden,” said Monroe 
Burton. 

“I wish he were a bit more of mystic,” said 
Fletcher Hilton. “Sometimes I think he 
really is more responsive to these things at 
heart than his clear, cool dialectic would indi¬ 
cate, and that he is really assuming along these 
lines a good deal which he never says. Just 
the same I wish he would say as well as assume.” 

Morris MacDonald was sitting quietly with 
his eyes glowing. 

“It’s a great thing to have him,” he said. 
“And the best thing you can say about him 
is that he bends a mind of the amplest power 
to the most complete loyalty to the tasks of 
the Christian enterprise in the world.” 

It was like Henry Alton to conclude: 

“Of course I was thinking of Bishop Mc¬ 
Connell. But I was not thinking simply of 
him. He was an illustration of a principle. 
It is the synthetic mind which is to carve out 
the future of the world.” 


XV. PERSONALITY AND PHILOSOPHIC 

THOUGHT 


Henry Alton was not always a particularly 
entertaining writer. But he made up in pith 
what he lacked in grace. His voice did not have 
rich modulations which echoed with the color 
of human moods, but it did have a certain 
solid strength which made it very impressive. 
Alton was a man of deep and ample erudition 
rather than a technical scholar, though he did 
know the sources in one or two periods of 
philosophic thought fairly well and he under¬ 
stood very clearly what exact scholarship is. 
But his own mind brooded over vast stretches 
of human territory and it was as a discrimi¬ 
nating thinker that he did his best work. 
When he read a paper before the club every 
man knew that he must come prepared to 
think closely and to hold his mind to finely 
drawn distinctions. He also knew that there 
would emerge at last a luminous view of the 
subject discussed seen with a certain ample 
perspective. 

The theme of Henry Alton’s paper on this 

particular day was “Personality and Philosophic 

120 


PERSONALITY 


121 


Thought.” He had been reading the brilliant 
Gifford lectures by Professor Clement C. J. 
Webb, who holds the lately founded chair of 
the philosophy of the Chrisitan religion at 
Oxford University. These two volumes of 
Lectures deal respectively with God and Per¬ 
sonality and Divine Personality and Human 
Life . Alton began by paying tribute to the 
fine qualities of mind, the fairness of spirit, 
and the easy mastery of his materials which 
Professor Webb brings to his task. He spoke 
of the happy fashion in which literature is 
made to give hostages to philosophy in these 
luminous discussions. And he stopped to 
remark how easily Professor Webb picks up 
matters of common habit and expression in 
order to illustrate some matter of philosophic 
import. “All the while you feel that Webb 
is a disciplined and tempered man of letters 
living in understanding contact with human 
life, who has applied himself to the problems 
of philosophical dialectic.” He spoke also of 
the frank and understanding way in which 
the Lord Gifford lecturer speaks from within 
the circle of Christian experience, assuming 
that only so can a man adequately apprehend 
the data and understandingly discuss their rela- 


122 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


tionships. He spoke of how like tempered 
steel the mind of Professor Webb moves among 
the most subtle philosophic distinctions. Only 
years of walking sure of foot through the 
labyrinthine mazes of metaphysical speculation 
can make such work possible. Then the author 
of the paper moved through the two volumes, 
showing how they followed the history of that 
thought which comes to fullness in our modern 
view of personality and of the fashion in which 
the conception of personality is analyzed as 
it relates itself to God and to human life. In 
the latter discussion the economic life, the 
scientific life, the aesthetic life, the moral life, 
the political life, and the religious life are 
considered. Then Naturalism is analyzed as 
an interpretation which disintegrates person¬ 
ality on the physical side. And absolute ideal¬ 
ism is discussed as an interpretation which 
disintegrates personality on the mental side. 
The temperate discussion of the belief in 
immortality with which these Gifford lectures 
close came in for thoughtful treatment. 

But it was evident that Henry Alton was 
making this scrupulously careful approach for 
the purpose of doing something more than to 
review the commanding work of Professor 


PERSONALITY 


123 


Webb. He wanted to set forth graphically 
and to emphasize its implications. He moved 
out into an analysis of the implications of an 
interpretation of life which repudiates per¬ 
sonality. By many close and subtle bits of 
analysis he showed that such an interpretation 
is all the while driven to assume the very 
things which at last it is so eager to deny. 
He showed that what we mean by personality 
has always been implicit in the thinking which 
has been least conscious of the meaning of its 
own assumptions. Then he turned to the 
ethical experience of men and showed how its 
very fundamental postulate is that free and 
knowing experience and choice which is the 
very nature of personality. He showed that 
ethics has no standing ground in a world 
which is not definitely personal. He viewed 
the death of art and the decay of religion 
which would inevitably follow any view of the 
world which was entirely impersonal. He 
lifted the claim that no interpretation of life 
can be true which fails to give standing room 
to the whole series of structural and essential 
human experiences. Then in a final piece of 
highly articulated dialectic he showed that on 
the basis of an impersonal view of the universe 


124 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


you can never account for any system of 
philosophy, not even an impersonal system. 
A man has to be a person in order to deny 
that he is a person. The intellectual life goes 
down as completely as the moral and religious 
life in an impersonal world. But the mission 
of philosophy is to organize human experience 
into some harmonious totality of interpreta¬ 
tion and not to deny its most characteristic 
aspects. So an impersonal view of' life falls 
into ruins the moment you subject it to critical 
analysis. Alton closed by saying that the 
thing we mean by the word “personality” is 
the one fundamental matter in all experience 
human and divine. 

Morris MacDonald with his Scottish enthusi¬ 
asm for metaphysics was the first to speak. 

“Here’s to you, Judge,” he said. “That’s a 
piece of thinking after my own heart. But, 
mind you, I do not think that either Professor 
Webb or his interpreter has been entirely 
just to Hegel or to some of his followers. It 
isn’t satisfactory to push off the edge of a 
logical dilemma the men who fought so superbly 
against materialism and taught the world to 
see all reality in the terms of the movement 
of the mind.” 


PERSONALITY 


125 


Baldwin Paxton was moving a little rest¬ 
lessly in his seat. 

“After all,” he said, “we know very little 
about these things concerning which we con¬ 
struct such learned phrases. We do know 
that we can follow certain constant processes 
in the great order of nature. Is it not enough 
to think of the Master of Life as the Father 
of Order and the mission of man to achieve 
the harmony of moral order here? Why try 
to push the human mind into regions where 
it has no sure data upon which to move? It 
seems to me that all this emphasis on person¬ 
ality very easily turns into an enthusiasm for 
lawlessness. There is nothing fickle about the 
laws of nature. Personality may be as fickle 
as some of the Greek gods.” 

Bowen Tillman was ready with a bit of 
reminiscence: 

“It all takes me back to the class room of 
Borden P. Bowne,” he said. “His lectures on 
‘Personalism’ gave my mind its bent as far as 
it has any bent in things philosophical. His 
lectures were full of merciless light and all the 
amazing ironic laughter of the mind. It was 
tremendously good for a young man. And it 
put firm ground beneath no end of feet.” 


126 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


Waldo Bryant looked up at the moment. 

“Professor Bowne would not have been satis¬ 
fied with Professor W r ebb’s attitude toward 
Personal Idealism,” he said. “In fact, it seems 
to me that Webb’s work would gain much in 
strength had he found it possible to accept 
the position of philosophic idealism with per¬ 
sonality as its ultimate fact. As it is with all 
his fine work, he hardly escapes dualism at 
last. You feel how it clips his wings when he 
comes to consider the doctrine of immortality.” 

Hunter Morrison followed next: 

“I have been reading Webb too,” he said. 
“It seems to me that he treats the new psy¬ 
chology rather cavalierly. You can hardly 
brush it aside with a majestic wave of the 
hand.” 

Benny Malone chirped up at the moment 
with a veritable twitter in his voice. 

“All this is tremendously solemn and im¬ 
pressive,” he said. “As for me, give me Berg¬ 
son’s Creative Evolution or give me death. I 
like to live in a world where things can happen. 
The materialists tie me up so fast in physical 
laws that nothing can happen. The absolute 
idealists tie me up so fast in the laws of logic 
that nothing can happen. Then comes Henri 


PERSONALITY 


127 


Bergson with his declaration of independence. 
I’m for him. I will be caught in no Webb of 
mediaeval dialectic.” 

“Toss out the pun,” interrupted Fletcher 
Hilton, amid a chorus of groans. The way 
of the punster was always hard among the 
Twelve Merry Fishermen. 

Coulton Moore now spoke: 

“Benny has said something in spite of his 
nebulous Webb,” he insisted. “Only I would 
put it in another way. I’m only interested in 
philosophy in order to find standing room for 
life. And the pragmatists give me that. 
Schiller and James give me what I need. Great 
is pragmatism, and they are its prophets.” 

“Go on to Einstein and wallow in relativ¬ 
ity,” shot in Morris MacDonald. 

James Clayton now spoke up in his thought¬ 
ful way: 

“It seems to me that some of us are not 
making a distinction between things which 
sound exciting and things which are exciting,” 
he said. “Webb is all the while trying to 
make room for the very freedom and initiative 
which Malone and Moore want so badly. Only 
he is trying to get it in a world which has a 
sound basis of order underneath its freedom. 


128 TWELVE MERRY FISHERMEN 


An aeroplane is wonderfully exhilarating, but 
you would better not break too many laws 
of physics as you go up in the air. Pragmatism 
gives you freedom without law. The systems 
of necessity give you law without freedom. 
Webb so interprets life that you have room 
for free decision in a stable and orderly world.” 

“All of which has been said so well that I 
have nothing to add,” declared Henry Alton. 

Monroe Burton had said nothing during the 
discussion. As the men broke into little groups 
at the end of the meeting some one noticed 
hovering on his face an inscrutable smile. 






























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